If you’re looking for a nice, depressing article to read, this one by Robert M. Cassidy at The Globalist on the futility of our war against terrorism should do the trick. Here’s a snippet:
To summarize the problem, there are legions of seasoned tactical professionals who employ the best resources and technology but serve in institutions with cultures that produce Pollyanna junior-general-officer leaders who are seemingly incapable of broaching failure or exhibiting strategic thinking.
These legions are fighting perpetual wars against, as of yet, inexhaustible sources of Islamist militants with the goal of killing all disbelievers. Yet, the Islamists benefit from support and sanctuary from non-state actors and states machinating to the detriment of the West.
So, what is there to do about our Pollyannas and this war without end? Are more tactics and violent actions without strategy rational? Is escalating the violence by firing more missiles, dropping more bombs, and sending more troops with overly optimistic generals, a sane response?
Massive air-burst-ordinance (MOAB) bombs disrupt, they even unhinge, but their effects are fleeting and do not bring about strategic ends.
I actually think it’s pretty simple. We don’t win because we don’t want to win. The psychological, political, and cultural implications of what we’d need to do to win are just too devastating.
Or said another way, the cost of “winning” is way too high. No sane person would choose to pay it and even then the outcome is not assured.
There’s a saying probably apocryphally ascribed to the Chinese, an inversion of Blackwell’s formulation: “Nine suspects; nine executions. You’re sure to get one murderer.”
Think of what we did in WWII. We killed about 15% of the German population. If we had done the same in Iraq, we would have killed more than 2 million people. Even the most exaggerated estimates don’t find that.