p
They may not like you, but if they’re scared of you, that’s good enough...
Our wars in the Middle East are not endless. They are days or weeks at most. It is the nation building that is endless.When it comes to the Middle East, we may always win the war but we always lose the rebuilding.Winning hearts and minds at the cost of losing American limbs is too heavy a price to pay when it comes to that dysfunctional society. As many of them will hate us after the war as hated us before the war, no matter how much blood and treasure we throw away on nation building.So the simple solution is win the war, leave and the let them deal with their own rubble.Case in point is that the war that was our most senseless in that it was of absolutely no national security interest to us was the one that was the cheapest - Libya. Why? Because we did not spend one cent on nationbuilding.Just bombed and left. We got the same result in Libya, complete havoc in the aftermath, as we did in Iraq after a trillion dollars of nationbuilding.Few blame us in Libya while they kill each other but everyone blames us in Iraq.
Even now, I think there are side-deal provisions we still haven't been told about.
-PJ
The Romans knew it, back in antiquity.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.