Ralph Peters:
We invaded to smash al Qaeda and punish the Taliban for hosting them. Mission accomplished. Within six months. The correct military action would have been to remove our conventional-force presence while the jihadi bodies were still warm.
Instead, ideologues safe at home declared that we had to nation-build where there was no nation. Or “we’d have to go back.”
Going back would have been an eff of a lot cheaper.
I doubt they invented it, but the Romans had a way of dealing with bad guys from lands they didn’t want to (or couldn’t) add to the Empire: The punitive expedition. Go in, kick some booty as dramatically as possible, then bug out. It wasn’t a permanent fix, nor was it meant to be. Nor did it need to be.
How simple. How underrated. How did we forget that lesson?
Anyway, go read the whole thing.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member