(06-27-2025, 05:48 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(06-27-2025, 03:00 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: It's pretty amazing when we use the CIA and other agencies to do the quiet work with effect. OIF and OEF could've been handled so much better than they were if we'd used agencies and Spec Ops the way they were designed for.

Absolutely. 
The military is for breaking things, and the CIA is for breaking institutions. 
OEF and OIF had a mission to build things and institutions, and I don't think we have a government institution capable of that in places where people still have tribal affiliation.

That would be a very long process. A generation, at the minimum. Deeply entrenched religious dogma enabled by enforced ignorance is a tougher nut to crack than ideological overthrow. Sometimes I wonder if Afghanistan is doomed to remain humanity's backwater. Britain, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. have tried in vain to effect change and establish dominance in that region and left defeated.

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