Description
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were unsuccessful. This is the prevailing view among the citizens of the allied countries that prosecuted those wars. One might expect this to have weakened the confidence that these citizens have in their armed forces establishments, but it has not—Americans have as much confidence in their military today, after two decades of failure, as they had before the war on terror even began, and the United States is not unique in this regard. Our trust in the efficacy of military force has become so firmly entrenched that countervailing evidence cannot dislodge it: no amount of military failure, it seems, can persuade us that our institutions of violence are ineffective. Appraisals of past military performance and expectations of future military performance have been severed. I will provide an overview of the preliminary research on this phenomenon, before suggesting some explanatory factors of my own. My main aim, however, is to draw attention to the dangers associated with our dogged faith in the institutions of violence.
