Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
This is the heart of the problem. If a family has food, water and shelter, there is not a lot else. The family either has them, because they are provided or they have them because they can afford them via employment. It is not the militaries task to engage in social agendas. You don't see OXFAM building schools. They save lives. That's it.

I think the reasoning that people join an insurgency because they don't have a school or clean water is spurious and un-proven. Lack of clean water means you die. Lack of school means you are uneducated.

Where does it reason that good infrastructure helps defeat an insurgency? Cyprus, Thailand, and Northern Ireland all had/have excellent infrastructure. They did not help stop an insurgency in any way. The only time when provision of infrastructure the might stop an insurgency is when it's lack is the issue. In Peru, the road building program, actually aided the drugs trade!

I think the military mission should cease at prevent death and stop suffering.

he can eat for a day, teach him to fish he and his family can live forever-

The problem with only "saving" them is what your saving them from or for. Doesn't do much good to give them fish it only last for a meal, and it doesn't do any good to teach someone to fish if there is no water nearby, or the water has no fish in it. All the factors must be addressed or it will untimately end up cycling right back to the same problem over and over.