via Business Insider...
Mattis continued to harp on having a political end state and clear goals before any military action — whether that be boots on the ground or no-fly zone — or else he said, "you invade a country, pull down a statue, then say 'now what do we do?'"Awesome.
The general told Blitzer the military "is not worn out" and can carry out any mission, but "we should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state ... when you go to war, it can't be a half-step" — meaning, you have to be fully committed to winning.
Finally a bit of common sense. Read it all here.
You need to know what success looks like and constantly ask "Does the proposed element of action contribute towards that end state?"
ReplyDeleteI remember reading in the comments section on a yahoo article about the option to hit Syria. Most notable comment at the bottom was something like this:
ReplyDelete"We need to be more like Russia and China. They just sit back as the fight goes on, then only deal with the winners after it's over."
I couldn't help but to think that if we took that approach to most cases it would have solved about 90% of our foreign policy failures.