special ops haven’t turned around a single conflict in 15 years, but no one is questioning their effectiveness.

Colombia is hardly an anomaly when it comes to US special ops deployments—or the results that flow from them. For all their abilities, tactical skills, training prowess and battlefield accomplishments, the capacity of US Special Operations Forces to achieve decisive and enduring successes—strategic victories that serve US national interests—have proved to be exceptionally limited, a reality laid bare from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen to the Philippines. The fault for this lies not with the troops themselves, but with a political and military establishment that often appears bereft of strategic vision and hasn’t won a major war since the 1940s. Into this breach, elite US forces are deployed again and again.

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