> The label of forever wars that has been firmly attached to America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fails to acknowledge that poor planning and scant resources will always fail to secure postwar peace. It astounds me that anyone could be surprised by this. But the lessons of postwar Germany and Japan that led to their prosperous democracies today, including well-resourced physical and political reconstruction and the time to succeed, were utterly misunderstood and misapplied by Washington in 2003 and 2004. Israel has faced its own forever war since 1948. Poor planning and scant resources are also your enemy.

While there is no doubt that poor planning makes poor outcomes more likely, in this context culture matters a lot. If the people you are trying to help do not value the things you do, your plan likely will not work no matter how well intentioned or resourced.

Take a look at S Korea right after the Korean War and Egypt at the same time, they were fairly similar. Fast forward to today and S Korea is a thriving democracy with a good standard of living and Egypt is ... not. S Korea had to recover from the devastation of war, but Egypt did not. Egypt has received billions in foreign aid each year for decades.

Decades of foreign aid to the tune of billions have already failed. Many plans have already failed, with the result that Hamas has dictatorial control of an area and uses/abuses the populace in the war of terror that benefits no one. We don't need another big plan. Containing and controlling are now the only option.