What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan

Man...I bet that was a looooooooooonnnnnggggggggggggg AAR.

Tried to win a generational struggle in less than a generation

We didn't get anything "wrong" in A-stan. We simply lacked the commitment to stay there as long as it takes to force the Taliban to make a horrible decision which would have been to launch a massive offensive while we still had air superiority and thousands of troops in the defense on the ground. We invested billions of dollars and spent decades in country with no strategy to commit a permanent force to truly entrench the Afghan government that we put in place.

You can't be "wrong" on something when you NEVER had the intention to see the mission all the way to the end. When you decide to nation build, you can't quit for political reasons, and it doesn't matter which president made the decision to go in and then dump more money to keep it all going. I don't want our troops over there, but watch what happens when we leave. You will see years of sacrifice and investment fall into the hands of the Taliban and other groups. The Afghan government forces collapsing so quickly is an absolute embarrassment for our military, especially for our special operations forces who spent years training them.