The missed problem with military intervention; seems to have been our optimistic belief that the Iraqis and Afghanis would have immediately moved past tribalist factionalism, and adopted the western mindset of regionalism.

We assumed they would have seen us and automatically evolved to that mindset without the strife that we endured. They didn’t and even now our most reliable allies in the current conflict, the Kurdish Peshmerga is evenly divided along 2 tribal lines for its control.

Nothing we do can solve the tribalism problem until it is dealt with internally. We can try to force them from the outside and the result will be the same tribal fractures. There is just to much recent historical animosity and arbitrarily forced nationhood. We cant take the pieces and try rebuild the post-colonial nations, it is simply a futile effort.