The Long War: The United States as a Self-Inflicted Wound

Key Self-Inflicted Wounds

• Fight long wars with short term, partial and inadequate solutions.
• Underestimate risks, benefits, options like diplomacy, containment, deterrence.
• Fight the war we want, rather than the war we face: No real strategy for conflict termination and grand strategy.
• Deny the scale and nature of civil tensions and conflict: Sectarian, ethnic, tribal, economic, and governance.
• Confuse counterinsurgency with stability operations and nation building.
• Ethnocentricity: “Democracy” versus governance and local culture, and values.
• Underestimate the resources required and under-react as crisis or conflict develops.
• Deny the seriousness of the situation as it develops to Congress, American people, and ourselves.