| > Saying politics were the issue is mostly used merely an unfalsifiable statement. Not at all. There are plenty of historical treatments that clearly document the political issues that prevented the US from capitalizing on its military victories. For example, see H. R. McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty. It is true that much of the blame lies with military leaders; McMaster's book makes that clear. But the reason for that is that those military leaders were acting like politicians, not military leaders; they were telling elected politicians what they wanted to hear, instead of telling them the military reality. Politicizing the military does not do either the military or the country any good. > If the goal of the wars are redefined to some really narrow goal like just eliminating Saddam, which is revisionist at best That was the military objective, and it was achieved. No redefinition at all. The political objective was never clearly defined, which of course is not a recipe for success. > Afghanistan is also total chaos, 20 years later. Military might sure isn't helping there. If you ask the military to do a political job, and don't even clearly define what the political job is, of course they're not going to be able to succeed. That's not the military's fault. It's our political leaders' fault (and our fault as citizens for allowing them to get away with it). |