Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to The best use of military forces is to have them and not use them...

re: The best use of military forces
TB — (archived)

Number 1 is deterrence. It works on enemies that have fixed-location governments that are sane.

Number 2, the immediate threat of force, only works if they think you will actually use that force and fight to win. If we lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, this element will be completely gone.

It wasn't all that effective even before Iraq, since we already had Vietnam and a number of other cut-and-run demonstrations since then. Everything bin Laden and Saddam wrote prior to the wars indicated their steadfast belief that we would never go through with anything.

You might have noticed that surrounding Saddam with our military might didn't change a hell of a lot of his behavior, and I'm not seeing Iran or North Korea shaking in their boots either.

Number 3? I wouldn't mind seeing some details on how an "efficient" use of military force would have gone. A war in which failure is gauged by military and civilian casualties, and nothing else, is always going to fail.

We were probably in trouble the day we decided nobody was going to shoot the looters.

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