The Exit Strategy Myth and the End State Reality (interesting reading!)

[The Straight Story]

The Exit Strategy Myth and the End State Reality
CSC 2001

A 57 page PDF (best to download and read, slow on load) which has some eye opening observations on Iraq 1 and it's aftermath (as well as other military operations)
http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/search/Papers/bame.pdf

Iraq: Transition from the Cold War to Something Else

As the Soviet threat disintegrated, U.S. officials searched for a new enemy and strategic center of gravity to guide U.S. military intervention. Without such a centralizing threat, the U.S. had difficulty finding standards by which to design sufficiently specific end states and measurable steps to reach them.

Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait provided a basis for one model: former President Bush’s well-known “new international order.” The

[bemildred]

1. Mostly defense babble.

The thing I find interesting is the implicit assumption
that the US NEEDS military interventions.