I, for one, really found Clolin Powell's doctrine of "You break it, you buy it," to be an bizarre bureaucratic concept not at all consistent with history.

What would have happened if we just broke something and left it for those folks to clean up? Hasn't that strategy been viable and applied many times throughout history without this British/Empirical Model of "Clear, Hold, Build" until the empire has bled itself to death.

Massive retaliation/intervention with no holding purpose was, after all, used to some effect along the Durand for centuries without too much detriment. Once the climate changes a century ago and the Silk Road broke down, these areas have been marginal/challenging. Shall we fix that little climate stuff, too?

Is there a field manual for Smash, Grab, Run, then Threaten from a Distance.
I would point out that "break and leave" is how WWI morphed into WWII, and how post-Soviet Afghanistan morphed into the Taliban, to give a couple of examples of the problems that arise out of abandoned broken societies. As for the notion that it used to be acceptable to muck things off and then do an exit stage left, I would argue that it did not work historically that you could simply go in and break an entire society and walk away. There was usually some hell to pay. On the other hand, once Rome fell, for the centuries until the French Revolution, war was a much more limited affair, so blame Napoleon, not the Brits.

Powell was exactly trying to keep people from thinking that breaking was all you had to do, and trying to make people realize that once broken the thing is very hard to put back together.

The way you avoid the problem is not to break the thing entirely -- eg, in Iraq, go in, get Hussein, and turn the keys over to Tariq Aziz. With a stern warning about not making us come back again. But if you break Afghanistan and leave, what do you think happens? Someone else, who lives in the neighborhood, is going to walk in and impose their vision of what they want the rebuilt thing to look like. Do you want an Afghanistan under the control of Iran? Russia? China?

Again, the point is to not break the thing in the first place, to take that step only with great care and for spectacularly great reasons. If we hadn't lost focus on Afghanistan for four years, the rebuild might have been a bit easier. Maybe not. But breaking Iraq was an all time stupid idea.

Jill