Is this simply an acceptance of the realities of waging regime changing war, or is it morphing the military into places we really shouldn’t be taking it?
A lot of the Iraqi hostility toward us seems to stem from the fact that we let the country go to hell in a hand basket in a ham handed occupation that has allowed disorder to flourish. If we had a policy like this in place prior to the Iraq invasion would it still have morphed into such a mess? Will the Pentagon ever value nation-building as much as war-fighting
It is a mutation that we don’t want. It is also a refutation of Bush’s own claims (at one time) that we would never ever be a bunch of “nation builders”.
I think the Pentagon is grossly overreacting to this situation. To say, as the Secretary England’s new directive does, that “Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission” – well, it represents a fundamental redefinition of the Defense Department’s mission. They’re as much as saying that from now on a normal American military operation will be one that involves post-combat occupation, or even restructuring of the enemy state’s society. In bureauspeak, England is saying, “We’re an empire now and we’re going to remain one and we’re going to act like one.”