What? Don't you get it, if you don't have a willing ally in place a war is as good as lost. We won against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Why? Because we had allies (the Northern Alliance) who were willing to fight. Imagine the hell it would have been if we had unwilling allies in Afghanistan. Plus we were able to defeat the Taliban with a minimal number of ground US forces because of those allies. Fortunately the US military has gotten a lot SMARTER since Vietnam days.