re: #355 Feline Emperor of the Conservative Waste

The US media, political campaigns, and pundits seem to act like the rest of the world is static, unchanging, and simply exists to react to our pronouncements. Thus you get to see these articles and statements “blaming” this or that administration for events like they are puppet masters able to make thousands of foreign nationals act via a single tweet or email.

This is the same sort of blindness and ignorance that leads to rose-tinted glasses views of what happens when you invade a foreign country to “liberate” it. Not to mention the “short victorious war” syndrome as well where foreign policy and war becomes an oversimplified extension of internal politics.

The problem is that politicians have little choice but to promise a “short victorious war”. How would people respond if a president said this instead:

This crisis demands we send our armed forces to remove that tyrant and stabilize Country X. But I must tell you not to expect swift progress. This is likely to take years and our forces will face an insurgency from the tyrant’s supporters. Defeating that and giving a new government a chance will take time, and that is all we will ultimately be able to do. All armed intervention can ultimately do is by time for the new leaders of Country X to fix the political problems that left them in such a bad place.

A president who said that would likely find Congress cutting off funds for the intervention.