“War is politics by other means.”
Yup. I read von Clauewitz 50 years ago.
“We need to look that squarely in the face. This “the operation was a success, but the patient died” BS we got after Afghanistan, and Vietnam, keeps us from studying what happened, what went wrong, and giving considered thought to how to fix it. That is: how to win war, as a nation.”
Which kind of reinforces my point: We WON militarily, but politicians threw away the victory.
It’s kind of like a football game where Team A beats Team B. The game is over. Team A won. However, the college president (or team owner) of Team A decides that the QB wrote a mean tweet a week before the game, and to atone for that social faux pas, the college president (or team owner) declares to forfeit the victory.
It is nothing like that. If you want to use a game analogy, we voluntarily got into a football game without a game clock, or a mercy rule. You play until one side concedes. The team that quits first loses. Even if they are up 882-11. Pointing to the scoreboard as you trudge off the field after quitting, with the winners' victory cries ringing in your ears, is like pouting that you had more yards of offense after being outscored in a regulation game.
The US could have decided that warlordism is the best case scenario for Afghanistan, given the military the task of helping anti-Taliban warlords carve the country up into fiefdoms, and called it a day. The war would have continued, but the warlords would be fighting it. That was an outcome with a military solution -- if the warlords could stand on their own after we left, and they probably could have, certainly around 2003.
Instead we chose to try to turn Afghanistan into a secular, western society. There is no military solution for that sort of culture change. They best the military can do is create space for the civil government to try to impose the culture change. But that was always going to be a multi-generational project, and there was never any chance we were going to keep fighting that long. By trying to do so for twenty years all we did was weaken the would be warlords to the point that the Taliban coasted to victory when we left.
We have proven twice that going to war to support a corrupt, uncommitted, regime (not saying there were not good folks on our side in Vietnam and Afghanistan there were)against a fanatically dedicated insurgency, who are supported with men and material from sanctuaries across international borders, results in an endless war, and the loss of everything when we finally pull out.
We need to work out a solution. End the trans-border sanctuaries. Compel the leadership of our ally to operate honestly and effectively. Acknowledge that neither will happen and go into the war understanding that we are just fighting to buy time. Or even decide to not get into that sort of situation at all.