War

Ron Paul on the failure in Yemen.

Despite US training, equipment, aid and military advisors since 2003, Iraqi troops are not good enough to fight ISIS.

More US-trained and armed Syrian rebels join ISIS and al Qaeda.

Sherman's total war philosophy as the model for US warfare since.

The reason the US keeps losing wars is central planning.

"Journalistic old-hands in the regions, men who have spent decades following the wars and the complex and shifting alliances, say quietly that the cause is American ignorance of both the lands and the people. Virtually no one in the United States has any notion of the region, they say, though all seem to have strong opinions. Policy thus rests on self-assurance buttressed by factual vacuum."

The pretense of knowledge.

"It is well known that Paul Bremer, the virtual viceroy of Bagdad after the city’s fall in Gulf II, disbanded the Iraqi army. Less known is that he replaced Mohammed al Aksa, the chief of intelligence, with Abdul dhar es Salaam, a known Sufi extremist with ties to Iranian intelligence. In fact he seemed to be on its payroll: The man had palatial residences, widely suspected of having been paid for by Tehran, in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, in Bangui in the Kurdish north, as well as in the ritzy Sulawesi suburbs of Fallujah (the latter dwelling destroyed by American shell-fire in the siege).
Bremer apparently didn’t know any of this, though it was a commonplace in journalistic hangouts. Dhar es Salaam was instrumental in stirring up resistance to Coalition forces trying to pacify the country—while on the American payroll."

We keep funding both sides in wars.