For years, in reaction to the substantially failed American adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, talk about “forever wars” has abounded. It’s a foolish concept. It should be obvious enough that wars are unpredictable and don’t come with an end date.
More basically, though, “forever wars” is a misnomer because what Americans find objectionable about the post-9/11 wars is not the war part. In terms of combat, American victories in those conflicts were rapid and decisive. What grates is the ineptitude and delusions of the bipartisan Beltway in managing the post-combat phase — in particular, the notion that we needed to mire our troops and agencies for decades in a multitrillion-dollar sociology experiment to determine whether Western democracy would take in fundamentalist Islamic societies.
Comments