to refight a 'conventional' war (see WWII), but the world doesn't work that way any more.

Tanks, aircraft carriers and F-35's can't do much when it comes to IED builders.

Hmm? Aren't we using private terrorist organizations instead of sending our boys and girls into harm's way? /s

The purpose of our wars is to transfer our money to the defense industry. The longer the war the more money that flows into their pockets. War is a $2 billion dollar a day scam. And to remove the leaders who won't allow our "special interests"to have access to their resources.

Imagine if that $2,000,000,000/day was being spent on this country instead.

Unbridgeable Gap: Who We Were and Who We Thought We Were

Americans, and their soldiers, were led to believe they fought for democracy and freedom these past 17 years; the truth was far murkier.
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In July 2001, while my high school friends partied during the summer before college, I found myself at Cadet Basic Training – "Beast Barracks," as we called – a new officer candidate at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Hating it from the start, I wanted out, but, well, quitting wasn’t an option. Four years later, I was one of 911 cadets who graduated – Time magazine profiled us as the "Class of 9/11" – and commissioned in the US Army on May 28, 2005. Some 18 months later, I arrived in Baghdad.
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The intervening 17 years have been a blur: training, deployment, promotions, more training, another deployment. It’s been a long, emotional path from enthusiasm, to belief, to doubt, to dissent. Reflecting, now, on my wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – and on my country’s other conflicts – Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. – is both difficult and cathartic. What’s been most disturbing is discovering the gap between who we, the vets and this whole nation, thought we were, and, in reality, who we actually were.

And, in each war, in every case, there’s been a tremendous chasm between the comforting fables we’re told to believe, and the reality of the American military’s role in the Greater Middle East.

*Afghanistan seemed the most defensible invasion. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were there, they’d planned the broad contours of the 9/11 attacks in that landlocked, barren shithole (to borrow a cheeky phrase from our current commander-in-chief). We, the soldiers and the American citizenry, were told to kick ass, take vengeance, and, in the process, to bring democracy, gender equality, and basic modernity to Kabul and Kandahar.

In reality, bin Laden escaped, Al Qaeda fighters died or fled, and counter-terror quickly morphed into armed nation-building....
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*Iraq, we were told, had WMDs, had colluded with Al Qaeda, and that Saddam Hussein was a loose cannon who had to be stopped…like now! Once there, on the ground, the U.S. military had to stay indefinitely, to "fight them over there," so that we didn’t have to "fight them here at home." It was a farce, a fiasco. Then, we were told, we had to reengage, keep fighting (we still are) to vanquish the ISIS menace.

In reality, it was all so much BS. The intelligence was wrong, potentially fabricated, and Saddam, in truth, was a tightly caged animal unable to menace his neighbors....
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*Libya was a supposedly "humanitarian" intervention, unleashed by a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, a "liberal" president. We had an R2P – a responsibility to protect – rebels who’d otherwise be slaughtered by their brutal dictator, "Mad Dog" Gadhafi. It’d be short, it’d be neat, and the U.S. military could do much good with little exertion.

In reality, the U.S. and its NATO allies took it a step further. The R2P morphed into all out regime change, and – without any real plan for the day after Gadhafi was brutally murdered – Libya descended into chaos....
*In Yemen, we were told the Houthi rebels were an Iranian front. We had to back our "allies," the Saudis, in their terror bombing campaign. Otherwise Iran would win! It was really the Houthis who denied the civilian populace access to humanitarian assistance. Besides, this was a Saudi war, and the U.S. would take a back seat.

In reality, the Houthis weren’t Iranian stooges; that was an exaggeration. The official toll is 10,000 dead civilians, though most counts stopped in 2016. Iona Craig, an investigative journalist and Yemen specialist, recently told me that 50,000 is a more likely figure....
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As a lowly, ground-pounding, soldier, I’ve been an embattled police officer of sorts, doing the bidding of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, or their associated proxies across the region. Never, in any tangible sense, did we act in vital American interests or make the world a safer place.

In that broader, global sense, we were told the U.S. was a force for good, an “indispensable nation,” a bringer of liberty. In reality, we were a counterproductive force for chaos, the armed wing of an increasing rogue, though ostensibly democratic, regime in Washington.

And me, well, I survived, and tried to get as many of those around me, those in my charge, home safe. At that I failed. And so did America.

What this essay is is an indictment of our leaders, our political leaders specifically.
The premise is "war is the continuation of politics by other means."

The sorriest bunch of bloodthirsty sociopaths in history.

What was supposed to be a political check on military adventurism has turned into the motivation for neverending war. The militaristic mindset of our Neoliberal/Neoconservative military consensus has propelled us into unnecessary and unwinnable wars without end.

It is impossible to wage a military war against an ideology. The political glorification of war by politicians and the media will lead to the downfall and destruction of the American Empire. A nuclear war, in pursuit of political dominance, will make our planet uninhabitable and could lead to the extinction of human life.

Yes, but no military is, or had ever been, good enough to deliver victory in the various foolish wars our political system has ordered the military to fight.

what happens when you run an army the you run a (corporate) business.

The US hasn't won a war since WWII.

I was born in 1982; I was 18 when 9/11 happened, I will be 36 this year. I'm pretty sure it's more than 50% for me.