Small Wars in the "new" cash strapped Western economy

[Dayuhan]

why would you set forth policy you know is stupid? Did anyone ever do that?

Revise the question slightly: did anyone ever set forth stupid policy?

Corrolary question: has anyone ever burned extraordinary quantities of money, time, lives, etc in pursuit of stupid policy?

If my policy maker says this is not a military problem, then why are we discussing it?

We're discussing it because policy makers don't always make smart policy, and the first step in the pursuit of policy is to assess the policy to be sure it makes sense. If our policy is to stick our head in a hornet's nest and kill all the hornets who want to sting us but not the ones who don't, then we don't need to find the most economical way of killing only nasty hornets. We need a new policy.

Yes, I agree, you can save lots of money by simply doing nothing. How does that provide anything useful or any insight?

You can also waste a lot of money trying to do something that you don't need to do and probably can't do.