In general, we fortunately live in time when ethnic cleansing and mass murders are not acceptable behavior for civilized countries. That explains best why winning war is so hard. However, West introduced that principle for own protection, to prevent revenge by desperate remnants of some decimated nation. It does not take much money and knowledge to release nerve gas in metro system of large town or release deadly biological weapons in wide area. As long as West keeps restraint, chances of such response are much lower.

What should be a more pressing concern is the collapse of this country due to the warfare/welfare state and totalitarian rule that will surely follow as a result. Sin (such as illegal wars) profit us nothing, so repent and serve the Lord instead.

See Van Creveld and William Lind on Fourth Generation Warfare to understand why the “suberb military” is a piece of gold plated shit shovel.

But it is a suberb military if the goal is to expend an infinite amount of resources to achieve nothing.

Our problem is not that we’re not well equipped, or well trained, or that we lack intelligence, or that we have the wrong organization chart. It’s all willpower. Do we have the will to fight? Do we have the will to kill the enemy in his homes? Do we have the will to keep burning the forest until the enemy gives up or dies? Lack that will and you get slow-motion disaster, which is nearly every war we’ve fought since Korea.

The tide turned in Iraq because we actually found the balls to send in two extra divisions and kill everything in the Baghdad city limits that wasn’t in view of a TV camera. Take that approach wherever you find the enemy and keep at it and eventually you’ll find the victory that you term as being so elusive.

Oh, and it helps not to care what they print in stuff like the NY Times and Le Monde.

In his examples of Madeline Albright’s incompetent comment regarding use of the military, and the Pentagon paragon who exalted “decision superiority,” he points out that at the policy and strategic levels, these people are only thinking in terms of tactics. Our problem has been that with the absence of even military strategic thinkers, the policies and “strategies” proposed are either/or. Either we are tracked, armored heavy forces, or we are jump-out-of-the-clouds-at-night ninja snake eaters. We have to be both. We distract ourselves with a single silver bullet solution and neglect that it has always been the “Big War to Solve Big Problems” that has always saved America’s ass. It is true that WWI caused more “pain than gain,” however it would have certainly been WWII in 1928 had Germany dominated Europe. WWII and the Cold War do not really need justification (also see “Civil War”). It is the small wars that we flub that give us “syndromes.”

Sadly such an approach means a huge amount of death and suffering for non-combatants. That brutal reality when practiced in the 40′s, was so effective in imprinting the populations of europe and japan with an aversion to war, that to this day, both areas are havens of peace. I would argue, we need to return to the total war model on the 40′s if we are serious about a real and lasting victory and forget the chimera of liberal “victory” where everyone holds hands and sings happy songs as schools and hospitals are built by US troops- history has proven the former works and the latter doesn’t.

Our politicians and opinion makers are still clinging to WWII language and framing to describe our current conflicts around the globe. It’s a pathetic disconnect symptomatic of our docile consumer culture, oblivious to our imperial privileges, confused and frightened by the signs of paradigmatic corrosion and impending collapse.