'Why We Failed To Win A Decisive Victory'

Wars Are For Winning One of Codevilla’s harshest criticisms of American leaders is that although winning the majority of their battles, they continually lose wars. He cites numerous examples of instances where the US was capable in their ability to win the war but it was almost always inevitably loss due to leadership. Codevilla even discredits the US win in the Cold War as being the result of their Soviet enemy dying of “congenital disorders”. The US has often become involved in wars without a clear and concise objective for which they are trying to achieve. This evident in both Iraq and Afghanistan where a clear objective was not sought. US troops had decisively won the war, but were forced to occupy and policy the lands as a result of a lack of an exit strategy.
The issue of winning wars and defining victory is an issue Emile Simpson analyzes in her article “Why We Failed to Win a Decisive Victory in Afghanistan”. Simpson begins the article by defining what Western militaries consider victory by quoting Clausewitz, stating “we must render the enemy powerless: and that, in theory, is the
The phrase “use intelligence, not intelligence” means success in international affairs depends on grasping a situations fundamentals, on telling friends from enemies, choosing the right objectives, deciding on war and peace, and executing reasonable strategies, not on specific intelligence from satellites or imagery. Codevilla claims that even when received, intelligence information is not always accurate. He uses the example of imagery of Russian bases in which intelligence analysts were unable to decipher whether their surface-to-air missile launchers were empty or stored and how exactly they may be fired. Codevilla believes that this type of intelligence is useless and irrelevant in decision making because quality is not always guaranteed and information can be