General Stanley McChrystal in an interview in the New York Times: 'If you like this war enjoy this first part, because this is the best part'

"I tell people about this war, if you like this war enjoy this first part, because this is the best part. Because everything after this will be harder."

"There are three great seductions that happen to American administrations and to the military. The first is the idea of covert action. A new president comes in, and he’s told by the intelligence community, “We can create this great effect and it will be covert. No one will ever know who did it, and it’ll just be a good outcome.” And in my experience, it never stays covert and it rarely works. But it’s seductive because it seems like an easy approach to a knotty problem. The second seduction, which I lived as a part of, is the surgical Special Operations raid. That is probably epitomized by the Maduro raid. I would argue that we demonstrated extraordinary competence that night, but not much changed. I don’t think that we actually demonstrated the ability to change the facts on the ground to any extent. Which gets to the third great seduction, and that’s air power. We all love air power. In World War II, we went into the war with the Douhet theory, that air power, the bomber, will always get through, and therefore air power will be dominant. It was certainly very, very contributory, but it was never dominant."