Why doesn't military intervention in foreign conflicts work? Or does it?

In my humble opinion we are asking too much from members of our Armed Forces. We can not be police, politicians, civil servants, diplomats and (oh by the way) ... soldiers. While the State Department must coordinate with the DOD, they must take the lead after the military objective has been accomplished. The job of diplomats is to win the peace. The job of soldiers is to "close with, engage and destroy the enemy". Trying to wear too many hats means you don't do justice to any of them. "Mission First ... Soldiers Always".

I have probably commented on this topic more than my fair share, but I have to make one more comment. It is good to see there is a lot of interest in the topic and so many intelligent responses. I have read the responses, of course, because of a personal interest. Part of that interest is in being equipped with as many responses as possible for civilians who want to blame the military for doing it's job, instead of blaming the government for its seemingly endless use and abuse of our military force without well thought out adequate objectives - which include but are not limited to micromanaging it, and using it to do the work other government departments should be doing before and after the military does it's job.

Lots of water boiling on this one - I've read a great deal of the commentary below. I offer the following personal observation:
The office of President in this country is manned by incompetent fools because that "Office" is bought! It's a popularity contest with the lightest job requirement of any position existing anywhere within the U.S. of A. Spend the most $$ and/or make the most outrageous bovine spatter comments to keep your face out there and you'll sit in the big chair based on little else beyond one's age and place of birth! We need a constitutional amendment redefining the role of President and the educational and experiential requirements to perform satisfactorily...including provisions to fire that person and ANY member of Congress not performing to the standard of the vacuous promises they made! We need another line on ballots stating, "None of the above." If the 'None" item wins, then the two candidates are removed from contention and each party much provide fresh new candidates. Does any human being out there believe that such common sense ideas will EVER see the light of day?

I recall being a young sailor of 20, anchored in Jeddah in 1991, when our force stopped short of Baghdad. I was confused. A lot of us were. How did we come this far only to stop now?

I worked in Personnel, organized and administered advancement exams. I had to find medals and commendations for each sailor to add those points to their score. In my ten years of scouring service records, I never saw one Purple Heart, one bronze or silver star. How many points must be given out today?

I hope this is why the senior President Bush stopped short of destabilizing the region. The human cost was just too high. One time only did I have to pull and fax a copy of a SGLI for the beneficiary information. I'm sure this is largely computerized now, but somewhere I'm guessing there's a large growing pile of hard copies of those.

In as much of a mess as the world is right now, I believe that it would be very much worse if the United States had a zero-intervention policy. A good documentary to watch in support of this hypothesis is called "The World Without US."

Intervention is a political decision. If the politics of the decision to intervene are sound it 'may' work. Since most political decisions about intervention (or any other topic) are poor at best it is no wonder why military intervention, as of late has not worked as some would have it work. How many government programs in any area could be classified as efficient? I can't think of any off the top of my head. Just my take on it all of course.

Mostly, maybe for reason unbeknownst to most, we don't know what the end state should be. We are trained to kill, not to implement change. Intervention works when you have a plan or course of action to rebuild whatever it is you are tearing down or attempting to fix. Based or recent history it doesn't work because we can't change the values, or lack of values (depending on who you are talking to) to fit ours. Based on older history it has. It's a toss up and also a matter of wanting assistance (intervention) and assitance being thrust upon you.

Because we are there and not here where we belong.

I've always thought that the notion of the US military being able to build a nation or set in place some kind of government is irrational. The only reason our republic was successful was because we had a history of hundreds of years of a free nation until the monarchy was deemed tyrannical and that led to the revolution and ultimately the making of our country. To think that we could do that overnight, in parts of the world where many hate westerners, and haven't had any kind of organized government in decades is just not reasonable.

While intervention may be for a variety of reasons from political to humanitarian, our values may not necessarily be their values. Democracy is not for everyone. There are different forms of government whether it be monarchy, by counsel, or other. In societies where the differences are based in tribal, religious, ethnic or other historical reasons intervention is not a short term solution. It becomes a minimum of a one generation commitment to instill the new and wean out the bad (our opinion) in the culture of a different society. That culture has to be open to change. They may or may not be ready or willing to accept change.