[pstuart]

Indeed! They've brought peace and stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. /s

[linkregister]

To be fair, the responsibility overwhelmingly lies with the civilian leaders of the military.

[jessaustin]

If the tool never works how its users expect, it might be appropriate to blame the tool.

[nickik]

It might, but I think the US military is a great tool and does its actual job fantastically well. The only thing you can really blame them for is that they did not give a broad enough set of strategic options to civilians.

That said the civilian government usually gives them nonsensical task that they simply can not do.

[pstuart]

Sometimes the military does a great job on hiding their inefficiencies too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-burie...

[nickik]

Oh for sure. But relatively to other military they are quite good and even while they waste a lot they can mostly to their jobs. Other military are very expensive and very ineffective.

[jessaustin]

It's just that USA military never seem to win any wars... or honorably escape from any conflict... or actually accomplish anything they ever claimed to have set out to do. Even if we're generous and put Korea in the win column, that was a really long time ago.