Originally Posted by
UnderOveur
There are some who would argue that on 9/11 it became our problem, and others who would say it was our problem long before that.
Regardless, no one can say what has been done is a "failure". Not credibly, anyway. Democracy and representative gov't is a very messy and long process. It will be decades, perhaps, until such a conclusion can be drawn with any sort of credibility.
All of that very much depends on how you measure success.
There is no real debate that many of the actions of the last one hundred years have been little more than bloodletting without any real return.
The goals of war and nation building are of late almost never clearly stated, and it is even rarer that the unstated/loosely stated goals are achieved.
What constitutes success, what are the goals and what are the gains?
Without clearly stated goals, how can we even begin to measure success? What is it worth in terms of life and treasure?