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It's a question of setting what the strategic objectives of the war are. The first gulf war, Operation Desert Storm, was deliberately limited in scope -- liber
by andrewla 7y ago
It's a question of setting what the strategic objectives of the war are.
The first gulf war, Operation Desert Storm, was deliberately limited in scope -- liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control. Its predecessor, Desert Shield, as similarly scoped, to prevent an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. Both were successful by the metrics set out for it. Bush Sr. got a lot of flak from the burgeoning neocon movement for not driving through to Baghdad, a decision which in retrospect was incredibly correct.
Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, and the various "police actions" undertaken since then, have objectives that are unclear or are metric-based and do not easily translate to a simple objective that can be reasoned to be a stable endpoint. In this, it seems that the military is following suit with general industry trends towards vaguely defined metrics and objectives that allow for technical "success". This approach was pioneered, really, during the Kennedy administration with our approach to Vietnam and the "domino theory".
- devoply 7y ago> liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control Saddam was willing to leave. > Both were successful by the metrics set out for it. Because they were beat downs. > Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, and the various "police actions" undertaken since then, have objectives that are unclear or are metric-based and do not easily translate to a simple objective that can be reasoned to be a stable endpoint. i.e. not beat downs. America is good at beat downs, any idiot with a gun is good at a beat down because as the Beastie Boys said it takes a second to wreck. It takes time to build. Remote wars then are bad because they facilitate beat downs. Because America has big guns, lots of money, and little actual intelligence of how to fix or change anything. It's funny all these people saying oh well the CIA doesn't do anything it's those stupid people who are fighting with each other because of their ideology. And then look at how Russia with a bit of money screwed up American politics and how badly they reacted to this little bit of interference.
- tro7ghor4 7y agoDid Russia screw up American politics or did American media unrelentingly obsessing over Russia screwing up American politics screw up American politics?
- jjeaff 7y agoWe screwed up politics ourselves. Russia is just piling on.
- kapuasuite 7y agoDesert Shield preceded Desert Storm, so whatever causal relationship you’re implying is wrong.