After 20 years, what were the lessons learned from Afghanistan?

Nothing. The so called leaders of this country certainly didn't learn from Viet Nam and I doubt that future generations will learn anything from this debacle in Afganistan. Currently this country is led by a bunch of idiots, as it was in the fall of Saigon.

Don’t go to war, unless for national security. When you do, be serious as we were during WWI/II, complete no question defeat.

Lessons learned. Just off the top of my head.
1. Too much command churn. 4 commanders at the ISAF level in 28 months is too much.
2. We didn't battle corruption of the local and national governments enough.
3. We didn't learn from the lessons learned from our rotations.
4. We never developed a coherent strategy for prosecuting the war.
5. We turned Afghanistan into an economy of force mission which set everything back.

We didn’t learn anything we repeated Vietnam

SFC Michael Hasbun SSG Carlos Madden LTC (Join to see) LTC Dave Leppanen SrA John Monette CPT David Gowel Capt Brandon Charters CSM Charles Hayden Passed 7/29/2025
The German prop plane in this picture. NATO is pissed. More to follow. Newsmax and FOX did not pay BBC to run this story. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58416848 LTC John Shaw

Vizzini had this shit pegged YEARS ago.

Don't let out alligator mouth overload our butterfly ass.

Having served before the GWOT Era I only have an outsiders opinion here and I by no means mean to diminish the service and sacrifice of anyone who served there.

1. The US military is not a peace keeping force. Our inherent mission is to locate the enemy, close with the enemy and destroy the enemy. Not rebuild a country from the ground up.

2. If you fail to learn from history you are destined to repeat it. Afghanistan has been invaded by Alexander the Great, Genesis Khan's Mongol horde, the Persian Empire (twice), the British Empire, and the Soviet Union............ and wh a was the outcome of each attempt?

I believe those were too very hard lessons learned IMHO.

I served in Bosnia as was the deployment when I was AD early on. What we learned from both Iraq and Afghanistan is that we as American can't impose our values on other cultures because it won't last and in some circumstances can be self-defeating. We wasted Millions of dollars in terms of resources in the Middle East and what has it resulted in? We now have more enemies there than before. One of the last effects is the number of our veterans with Gulf War Illness which has ruined their lives. We weren't liberating anyone over there. All we were doing was pushing an agenda and placing our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines at risk. Our Middle-East diplomacy has been a disaster on many levels.

Any lessons that were learned are moot. Our leadership made us run that leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We lost warriors for us to run that never should have happened. We have Americans still there stranded get them HOME NOW. The chief of staff is responsible do your constitutional duty get the Americans home..Rangers lead the way