WHY we haven't achieved world peace.
HOW we achieve it.
WHAT we should expect once we get there.

Monday, April 09, 2007

It's time to withdraw when

It’s time to execute an immediate withdrawal strategy when one or more of the following events occur (not necessarily in this order):

  1. 1) You began the campaign based on well-documented lies.

    2) After thirty days in-country, you are not spending at least $10 on local development for every $1 spent on bullets.

    3) More than ten percent of your funding cannot be accounted for.

    4) The natives start fighting each other (beyond police round-ups) despite your troops on the ground.

    5) The native security forces you have set up are fighting each other over the spoils, or unreliable in combat, or despised by the local population.

    6) More than ten percent of the advisors you dispatch are ignorant political appointees, and less than 90% are topic-specialists fluent in local languages.

    7) The core district of the capital city is off-limits to average natives.

    8) Most journalists and NGOs evacuate the area of operations.

    9) Anecdotal, on-the-ground perceptions of occupier-native relations are in total contradiction of media/administration propaganda.

    10) You are sending the world’s most expensive aircraft out to bomb the world’s cheapest infantry.

    11) You cannot afford to maintain a ten-to-one ratio of your own troops versus high-end estimates of opposition combatants.

    12) Your human rights violations become a matter of routine and your troops start committing overt war crimes in large numbers.

    13) ??? (Feel free to add your comments).

 
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