: Against the Covenant, they were up against the wall and in deep shit almost
: every time.

Yes because H focused on the wrong thing. And it was probably the wrong thing to focus on given the insurrectionist threat that she faced at the time.

Nylund's hands were forced - his Spartans had to be soldiers because the game featured a super soldier instead of a super general :-) So looking at the haloverse as a real place can be unfair.

If we treat the haloverse as a real place then Halsey did manage to squander their potential. Taking Alexander the Great and making him fight people with 'his bare hands' is a waste of his talents even if it turns out that he is quite good at it. Do we conquer the known world or do we get Alexander to kill 800 people by himself?