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Ralph Peters:
... "And then you leave, and you leave behind smoking ruins and crying widows. ... And you never, never, never send American troops into a war you don't mean to win."
What stands in the way of Lt.Col. Peters thinking here is our contemporary definition of "winning."
"Winning" today means that the subject state(s) and society(ies) have been successfully transformed more along modern western political, economic and social lines.
Herein, such things as "accepting collateral damage," "not apologizing for it," "leaving behind smoking ruins and crying widows" and "sending in American troops" is considered to be a ridiculous suggestion/gross error/totally illogical/counterproductive.
And, thus, it tends to suggest that the individual making such suggestions does not know what our nation's actual mission, and/or our nation's political objective, actually is. Or that the individual making such statements simply disagrees with this mission and/or wishes to ignore it so that he can look "cool" or "tough."
The problem, of course, is that our enemies very much understand our mission and our political objective (outlined above) and seem to be telling us that:
a. If "transforming outlying states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines" is really what we want to do,
b. Then, in their neck-of-the-woods, this will require (1) "holding ground" on a massive scale (potentially, for example, that of the entire Islamic World?), (2) for endless decades, this, while we (3) do "nation-building" on a similarly immense scale and for a similarly endless period of time.
Minus our interest in such projects, then common sense tells us that some lesser, more intelligent ways/means/measures will need to be employed to achieve our objective.
This, as we hope, and as with the majority of communists before them, to ultimately cause the Islamists (et. al) to succumb to the lures and dictates of the market-place. And, hopefully, to ultimately succumb to the lures and dictates of other aspects of modern western civilization?