phil777 wrote:
I've watched a showcase yesterday about what goes on in the world, this one was about the case of Afghanistan and Irak and the reconstruction. It might not occur to you but there are a lot of widows with quite a few children, and when they lose their husband, they cannot sustain their lives. They are even shunned by their society unless they remarry. One of them couldn't even get money from the government because her husband was "missing" and they had no proof of his death. Moreso, the bureaucracy takes so long that they have to PAY the officials to hasten the process....
I think this points much more into the direction of a long term solution: The setting up a working state machinery, without significant corruption and under the law. But such a machinery can't work in a vacuum. The society must change, a civil society must be established. No military action, which will not lead into such transformation will have any long term success.
This task is much more difficult than keeping the country under military control.