The Good Idea Fairy Never Sleeps: Military Mission Creep Lessons Venezuela Shouldn't Teach Us Again

What happens when troops are idle, leadership lacks clear goals, and the military mission creep lessons from Vietnam and Afghanistan go ignored?

What's going on in Venezuela? I don't pretend to know the future, but I do know military history—and history has a habit of repeating, especially when leaders ignore the military mission creep lessons already paid for in blood.

Right now, I'm not exactly sure what the endgame is, but I know how these things can evolve. The military is great at training leaders and producing lessons learned and after-action reports. The problem is, those lessons are often forgotten—or the civilian leadership doesn't listen. And when people are given a mission, it's incredible how often that mission turns into something much bigger than it was ever supposed to be.

As we speak, there are probably plenty of service members sitting on ships, not doing much. And when troops are idle long enough, the "good idea fairy" tends to show up. Eventually, one of those ideas gets some traction with leadership, and before you know it, things start drifting into what we call mission creep.

I've seen this story before. I served in Afghanistan, and from the moment I arrived, I had the sinking feeling that nothing meaningful would come out of it. I saw all those Russian "bone yards" of the past while serving in Afghanistan. Back in my ROTC days in the 1980s, we studied Vietnam. Ironically, I later married into a Vietnamese family, but that's another story. The point is: Afghanistan reminded me of Vietnam in more ways than anyone wanted to admit.

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was bogged down in Afghanistan, and we were taught that Afghanistan was Russia's Vietnam. Fast-forward a few decades, and we ended up stuck there ourselves—twenty years deep, twice the length of our original Vietnam fiasco.

When soldiers get sent somewhere without clear leadership, clear goals, and clear limits, they start improvising. They have to. And that's when "making shit up" starts to feel like a strategy. Mix that with the good idea fairy, plus a little mission creep, and suddenly you find yourself years down the road, wondering how you ended up in something no one ever intended.

Venezuela might just be another place where those old patterns start repeating—unless someone remembers the history we already lived through. The military mission creep lessons from past conflicts aren't just academic exercises. They're warnings written in the blood of soldiers who paid the price when leaders failed to set boundaries, when objectives shifted without accountability, and when political will outlasted strategic thinking.

Maybe this time we'll actually listen.

Jason Pike

Veteran, Bestselling Author & Inspiring Speaker

jasonpike.org