Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
But is War is an extension of policy, then we rely on our politicians to lay out the policy. Democratizing the middle east with a Pollyanna view of what that was going to take, and then blaming the failure to succeed on the military, I have a problem with.
War is certainly an extension of policy, but the two are not separable IMO. It makes no sense for a nation to set as policy something which it knows is not achievable militarily, and it is incumbent upon the professional military to 1) know what is and is not militarily achievable, and 2) to explain it to the policy makers in no uncertain terms. Kim Jong Whoever is in charge of NK now could set as his policy tomorrow that it was necessary for NK to conquer China (a task similarly impossible for NK, in my view, as us democratizing Afghanistan). It's his military leaders' job to explain to him that it's a REALLY bad idea. In that country, they might get shot for saying something that the boss doesn't want to hear. Over here, they might have to take their pension a bit earlier than they had planned, and then go get a cushy job at some think tank making six figures and thinking big thoughts. My sympathy doesn't exactly overflow.

Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
We are not trained as political scientists or sociologists. We learn the art and science of war. We depend on the politicians to get the political science right. We are not in a position to tell them they got it wrong. As I have been told many times, my only option is to resign. That does not fix the problem.
No argument as to our training. We weren't even really prepared for COIN, never mind nation-building. While you're right that the military is not in a position to tell pols they're wrong with the political science part, it is certainly within the military's purview to explain its own capabilities and limitations to them. Thereby letting them know, among their policy options, which ones they can actually expect to succeed. The distance between "overthrow the Taliban" and "make Afghanistan a functioning democracy" is so vast in scope that you could measure it on a galactic scale. One is achievable, the other...

Maybe if enough people resigned, it would send the right message... Because frankly, those who have stayed in haven't fixed the problem either. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything that indicates that the problem is getting solved. Only that we have a sexual assault epidemic, that women should be able to do any job men do in the military, and budget, budget, sequestration, budget... none of which addresses the problems we are discussing. I'm not confident that the solution can come from within the belly of the beast.