Is the Afghan War Lost?

Danny Sjursen makes the case at the American Conservative.

The piece as a whole is worth reading, but the bottom line is that the Afghan government’s own military and police are hopeless: They are losing to the Taliban. The US military, with current force levels, cannot hold most of the country. Unless the US is willing to surge again, it will lose the war.

And even if it surges, that won’t win the war, it will only delay the inevitable.

Before the Afghan war, I remember reading an interview with the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, which I’ve since been unable to find. He said, paraphrased, “You will invade. You will take the cities. We will retreat to the countryside. You will not be able to destroy us. You will eventually leave and we will win.”

It struck me as prophetic at the time, and it has played out exactly as he expected.

The US is incapable of “nation building,” serious insurgency warfare, and is bad at occupation. (This wasn’t always the case, but it is now.)

The strategy, if there was to be a war at all, should always have been to go in, accomplish limited goals, and be out within three months–six at the most.

(This is somewhat true of Iraq, where the US should have knocked over Saddam, had a proscription list, and picked its Colonel to lead the country, leaving within six months. The difference is that a Colonel might have stood a chance in Iraq, no one but the Taliban is going to rule Afghanistan without ongoing foreign support.)

The US was always going “lose” in Afghanistan if it did not limit its goals sharply. The only question is how many people will die before the US gets tired of the ulcer and leaves.

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