I’ve been saying for at least 5-6 years that we needed to have stopped at the punitive expedition phase in Afghanistan, said “don’t let people like that live amongst you again, or we’ll come back and really mess you up”, and gone home. And never started the so-called Nation Building / Meals on Wheels phase.
Oh, I thought that from the day it was announced we would be going into Afg in force. 15 years ago. In one sense, we acquired some experience “fighting that kind of enemy” I guess you could say but it wasn’t the Afghan people and likely not the Afghan government who allowed Al Queda to encamp there. IMO these are by and large primitive people who may not like us, which is their right. But we learned nothing new for the exercise. Everything we might have learned we could have learned from the Soviet experience in 1979-198x.