When Can You See the Light at the End of the Tunnel?

When do we decide when we've won a war?

CATO is pretty isolationist so I don't have much use for them. So you know where I stand. So when they start out their case against regime change by noting "high‐​profile failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya" I have to shake my head.

You know my opinions that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are already victories we need to defend.

And Libya is an example of regime elimination and not change--and our participation was an American favor to NATO rather than being in our interests, as far as I'm concerned.

Yet even if you decide wars aren't enough of a victory to justify them, when you decide on judging victory or defeat is an aspect of correctly deciding that question, as I noted about Iraq in this post.

One thing that strikes me is how short-sighted the CATO argument is. Victory can take time. More victory can take more time. And defending victory can take even more time.

Some here look with envy at China's supposed long-range thinking abilities. Wrongly in my view. I think the Chinese just keep at things patiently without knowing where it will go according to some detailed holy plan. Without thinking we can plan for every contingency over years, we should have the patience to work the problems to bend events to our advantage.

But when you consider that the Germans sometimes excuse their lack of a real military for their latent and barely restrained Nazi impulses even after 75 years within the American-forged NATO community of democracies, maybe CATO has a point about the futility.

Or maybe we haven't had enough time to cure Germans of their latent goose-stepping urges.

And as to the CATO argument itself that few regime changes lead to democracy, who says regime change is only successful if it achieves a lasting democracy? Don't set the bar that high for every operation.