The Third Hundred Years War Has 86 To Go

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, that's totally what I said.

 I know, lol, that's why I put the winky face.....but, on a serious note.. we do have to curb blanket statements about how we fucked this or that up.  They can't be made and left unqualified.

My point is that the folks there are pissed-off at us because we're responsible for the crummy state of affairs they're living through.

-and there's that blanket, unqualified statement just thrusting out again even though, in gentle ridicule, we distance ourselves from it.  They;re pissed off at us because of the perception as-such, but it's not a strictly accurate perception..and even if it were wholly inaccurate (which it isn't, granted) then there would still be people who thought so..and coincidentally those people are the same people who shoot at us in the first place.   I can only say this so many ways and so many times. Committing to help people in these sorts of situation means being willing to take repeated blows to the face and body.

Either that, or we've stuck our hands into a Chinese finger-trap ... except that this one doesn't loosen the deeper you dig in.

To some extent, all military conflict or intervention is a finger trap if we commit to holding ourselves accountable for the results and to continue until we see the job through.  

I'm wracking my brain... and it is far too early in the morning for brain wracking... trying to come up with an example where we've had an unqualified "success."  Perhaps later, with a couple of more cups of coffee, one will occur to me.

I;m not sure what point there is in discussing unqualified successes.  I Can;t think of any either, but the perfect is the enemy of the good...or some-such, right?

-It;s probably useful to note that on this issue I have a -strong- bias. My unit didn't come from the big hooah recruiting push to bomb the browns. We had been peacekeepers for years in Kosovo directly prior, and would go on to operate in theater coalition training exercises based upon that experience. I don't want anyone to operate under the assumption that, when I defend interventionism, I'm defending our past failures or poor intervention doctrine. I come from the perspective of a MOUT unit that had been leveraging and assessing novel strategies prior to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We were accutely aware of the problems involved in trying to help people, not all of which wanted help, while holding an assualt rifle. The IED issue was a thing for us before it ever became news. We spent coniderable time..passing the time, trying to hide training ords in the cars we found just to see how somebody else might, so we'd know what to look for at a checkpoint. Managing not to kill everyone in town when some fuel bomb went off was a job requirement. Taking potshots from randos in the mountains we would never find was a boring tuesday detail, not an existential dilemma.

It -can- be done. I've seen it done. I've done it. I've seen it done so well that it becomes -boring-, and I've watched public opposition to intervention fade and be replaced by broad public support that starves violent elements. Imagining that it's impossible really isn't anything other than letting some asshole off the hook for their poor leadership, right down to the unit and individual level.