Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Every "lesson learned" I have seen so far coming out of our involvement in this conflict has been extremely tactical in nature. "How do we do the wrong thing better."

The lessons not learned, however, are:

1. Punitive Expeditions work.

2. "King Making" has been obsolete for at least 100 years, it is time to retire that COA.

3. "Fixing" some foreign culture where one has no legitimacy to undertake such a program is hubris and folly. Particularly when the concept of what "fixed" looks like is based upon the history, culture and perspective of the fixer, rather than the fixee.

I could add more, but those are my top three.
No issue with any of these, and it seems to me that if we would have embraced these 3 lessons as principles to guide our foreign policy we would seen very few or no failures with our interventions. Time for our leaders to stop selling the COIN snake oil.