Missionaries Summary
Phil Klay

Missionaries Overview

Missionaries is a critique of the proliferation of perpetual, unwinnable warfare around the world. By drawing a parallel between the failed U.S. military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan in its global war on terror with Colombia's decades-long, anti-guerrilla and anti-narcotics campaigns, Klay illustrates how shortsighted tactics invariably replace long-term strategic objectives, resulting in further social breakdown and resistance. In the book's examples of the modern standard of asymmetrical civil insurgency, it is impossible to keep one's hands from being bloodied in complicity despite better intentions. The book tackles, among others, themes of moral ambiguity, war, truth, the plight of the common people and missions.