I guess it is how do you define "win."
I think if we decide to stay in Afghanistan, we need to come up with a policy defining just what we are doing there, and for how long, what the milestones are, and which milestone we’ll use to finally leave.
We are still in Korea, Germany, and Japan.
Looks like good location for a military base, for the purpose of launching airstrikes against Iran and Pakistan and anyone else that deserves getting blown up.
We are still in Korea, Germany, and Japan.
Korea and Japan vs the NORKs...good idea, same reason.
But Germany needs to "woman up" and take care of their refujihadi murdering rapists. We've only made them weak by removing their need to provide their own national defense.
Come on, man!
Relevancy please, or are you just being snarky?
We're still in Montana, the Dakotas and Arizona. We were fighting the Sioux and Apache in those places more than 130 years ago. Long before the Germans and Japanese...
But this is now. None of those places in the old West, nor countries of our former WWII enemies, have relevance to Afghanistan. We are still fighting in Afghanistan. Nowhere else. While Afghanistan isn't a human meat grinder like other wars we've fought, we've been there, fighting, for almost 16 years. Every American we lose in that country needs to be justified. What is our goal?
Right now our goal is open-ended, like, "Until the Taliban lose".
We might as well wait forever. As long as the Koran is taught in mountain Madrassas there'll always be more Taliban.
To that end, I'm no longer sure we can win at all. And I am a war-hawk. I think Trump is seeing it similarly.
So bring some meat to the table. What do YOU recommend, given your long foreign service career?