Regarding the part I bolded, I think the underlying issue is failure to treat our excursions like the wars that they are. Some assert that the military is treating these excursions as war and using Clausewitz as a guide for strategy. The reality seems quite different, instead our military treats these excursions as a form of social engineering with vague ideas of self-determination, democracy, human rights (now includes gay rights), free market systems, and so forth. We get so caught in up in nave discussions about legitimacy (for whom?) that we forget the original purpose that we employed military force to achieve in the first place. What U.S. interest were we protecting or pursuing? What was the role of the military in achieving those objectives?
I do agree that no all conflicts are wars, but our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were certainly wars, as was Vietnam and Korea (despite labeling them as police actions for political purposes). With the exception of DESERT STORM where we had a limited objective, we didn't fight to win. In fact, it appears we no longer seek to defeat an adversary, instead we now throw money and ideology at our adversaries hoping to defeat them by co-opting them into our way of life. We have senior officers stating that if we just give the adversaries jobs they'll quit fighting (proven to be a false assumption repeatedly), or we simply have to win the battle of the narrative (even if true, we have demonstrated no ability to do this), or if we just install a democratic form of governance the people will pursue their objectives through a legal process. That wasn't true in the U.S., and we have one of the most advanced democracies in the world. We had a Civil War, and numerous terrorist groups in the 60s and 70s active in the U.S.. Why would that be true in countries that have a longer history of ethnic hatred and a high percentage of illiteracy?
Today we rarely hear or see any real effort to defeat the adversary using force. We promote the false belief that force doesn't work. Apparently the idea of using force isn't clever enough for those who see themselves as self-styled strategists who have a special understanding of the world that others can't grasp (also known as insanity). President Obama claimed we can't defeat ISIL with force, instead we have to promote better ideas. Listening to the radio I heard a counter argument to this view, which was that Nazism was only defeated by force. They weren't going to be defeated by better ideas. Why do assume that those who oppose us can't be true believers in their cause?
Our non-war approach results in years of ineffective operations at great cost to no discernible end. Instead of protecting or furthering our interests we simply deplete our human and financial resources, not to mention our reputation globally. The eating soup with a knife fans will mindlessly argue we just need to keep doing the same thing for another decade or two, and we'll win, but win what? Whether war would work or not regarding our current threats is debatable, but the way we're conducting operations now clearly is not working.
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