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I am not sure if they still do but the US Military War Colleges used to teach Baron Carl Von Clausewitz's Principles of War.

In every War since WWII we have ignored at least one if not all four of those principles. Let me think .... yep we haven't won a war since WWII.

We have not declared a war required in the Constitution since WWII as well.

Being a combat veteran of the Viet Nam fiasco I am curious what is the mission in Afganistan?

How can one win a war without defeating the enemy totally? Why do we still support and follow those who can't actually say “when such and such are accomplished we have achieved victory”?

All questions don't really need to be addressed as we don't seem to learn from our history any longer.

I am curious if any one can state the mission in Afghanistan.

[I am curious if any one can state the mission in Afghanistan.]

The mission ought to be to stick around until the Taliban dies of old age and/or despair. The current rules of engagement are what they are. The simplest way to end the Taliban would be to kill every single Pashtun in Afghanistan or drive them into Pakistan. Since we can’t, we need to stick around until the job is done. It’s a fairly low cost endeavor* compared to WWII, during which we spent 2 years of economic output and lost 400,000 dead. If we don’t, we will get similar attacks in the future. It’s not like our rules of engagement are going to loosen up and we’ll be able to wipe the enemy’s civilian supporters out. Given their preference for terror attacks on US soil against American civilians, we are literally fighting them there so our civilians here don’t have to get bushwhacked by them here.

* The total % of annual output we’ve spent fighting in the Middle East and Central Asia so far is 5%, vs WWII’s 200%. And US casualties combined are maybe a few dozen a year, vs 200 a day during WWII.

http://icasualties.org/