Andrew Bacevich explains why the war against ISIS repeats past U.S. mistakes in the region, and why even success in this war won’t change that:

We must hope for victory over the Islamic State. But even if achieved, that victory will not redeem but merely prolong a decades-long military undertaking that was flawed from the outset. When the 14th campaign runs its course, the 15th will no doubt be waiting, perhaps in Jordan or in a return visit to some unfinished battleground such as Libya or Somalia or Yemen.

Yet even as the United States persists in its determination to pacify the Greater Middle East, the final verdict is already in. U.S. military power has never offered an appropriate response to whatever ails the Islamic world. We’ve committed our troops to a fool’s errand.

Note that this is Bacevich’s best-case scenario. Even if the current policy “works” on its own terms, it is re-committing the U.S. to an untenable and unnecessary role in the region. In other words, the problem is not just that this particular intervention is unwise, but also that it relies on the flawed assumptions of decades of misguided U.S. policy that have been discredited by events many times over.

While we may hope that the war is a success, there are good reasons why we should not expect it to be. First, the war’s goal is unrealistic, as many observers have already pointed out. The U.S. has set out to “destroy” similar groups and quasi-states in the recent past, and has had at best mixed success. There is no reason to think that this effort will produce a significantly different outcome. Even if it were possible to “destroy” a jihadist group that thrives on militarized overreaction by its enemies, the means so far provided to achieve it are insufficient to the task. Even when such a group can be greatly weakened, the methods required to weaken it cause new resentments and help to spawn the next generation of jihadists.

This war is a mistake for the U.S. first and foremost because the U.S. was not directly threatened by ISIS, and it seems very unlikely that another U.S.-led war in the region will eliminate more threats than it creates. Therefore the U.S. is not making itself more secure by striking at the group. On the contrary, the U.S. has almost certainly become somewhat less secure because of the intervention, and it is likely to become more so the longer that it continues.