That's a great comment, but I disagree that the trend is ...worrisome.
The purpose of the military is to fight. And in the local sense, it is only increasing in effectiveness at its primary task.
But the primary task of a 20 year "war", is not fighting. It is the building a nation state.
That is something the military is not designed to do. It's absolutely insane we didn't have an entirely different branch of government whose job was to build a lasting system of compromises and coordination between local people. Even if the military did have that skillset and training, which they don't, the resentment from the local populace against the group of people they just fought against would be enough to compromise any mission.
It's like if we asked the same police officer to arrest a drug addict, then be the judge in the case, then be their parole officer, and finally help them find a job after their time served. It's a nice idea in a Utopian kind of way, but there are so many opportunities along that chain for the relationship to sour.
Oh, sure, the "winability" of what they were asked to do is also a problem. Lots of things were wrong with the entire enterprise, only one of which was the military's comfort with their own entire reporting structure openly lying constantly for years on end.
Just like ask to a service to protect the people from IT attacks and at the same the same service like to have backdoors to everybodys phones, cameras, alexas and computers.
The purpose of the military is to fight. And in the local sense, it is only increasing in effectiveness at its primary task.
But the primary task of a 20 year "war", is not fighting. It is the building a nation state.
That is something the military is not designed to do. It's absolutely insane we didn't have an entirely different branch of government whose job was to build a lasting system of compromises and coordination between local people. Even if the military did have that skillset and training, which they don't, the resentment from the local populace against the group of people they just fought against would be enough to compromise any mission.
It's like if we asked the same police officer to arrest a drug addict, then be the judge in the case, then be their parole officer, and finally help them find a job after their time served. It's a nice idea in a Utopian kind of way, but there are so many opportunities along that chain for the relationship to sour.