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ORIGINAL: macgregor

When someone tries to paint Yugoslavia as 'wag the dog', the argument is already poisoned. That conflict was the most successful the US has fought since WW2. Any trouble from that conflict occurred by trying to send ground troops to police the area afterward.

By the 'Libyan' standard you set, we've been in Iraq since the first Gulf War. It wasn't costing us trillions of dollars and I'd argue it was highly successful. A hundred thousand less people would be dead there, and Saddam's lack of popularity would be approaching the level of a Ghadaffy-like insurgency, not to mention a US economy benefiting from an extra trillion dollars, 5000 servicemen with triple that not disabled for life, along with cheaper oil.

I'm willing to forgive military mistakes. What I won't forgive is the adamant refusal to learn from those mistakes. And some lessons could have been learned in Vietnam.

We have 2 conflicts going on at once in southern Asia. One, a highly successful campaign using drones and commandos when targets are available, and one that is such a failure that it all but negates our success by maintaining an occupation force in Afghanistan. We should have been out of there yesterday. But to not see the success of our air/drone/commando campaigns is military ignorance of the highest order, and politically based.