Afghanistan became unwinnable the minute we lost sight of our goals.
We went in. We displaced the Taliban (temporarily). We destroyed Al Qaeda training sites. We built universities (that remain operational, for now). Etc. etc.
Any form of "leaving" is going to feel like a loss. But the big question is: why were we still in there to begin with? At least in the Philippines, the USA was sending governors over to... you know... govern.
We never even got that far in Afghanistan. We went in, killed a bunch of people/destroyed some sites, and then sat around for 10 years wondering what else we should do. Then we killed Bin Laden in Pakistan, and then still didn't know what to do about Afghanistan (and at this point: President Obama was constantly running / promising that we'd leave). We did build up a large chunk of Afghanistan: improving the airport, building universities, educating their population, hoping to win the local support of the people. But the local support never happened on a scale large enough for lasting change. Furthermore, it seems like large segments of their population didn't want to change, so we were making enemies while doing these actions.
Our next use of military needs to have clear and defined goals: something more than "lets hope those guys over there become our friends". If we focused on purely "destroy all of the Al Qaeda training grounds", that was mostly over in the first 6 months of conflict.
Or, if we are going to try and befriend the population / change it within, we need to be ready for a 40-year occupation, similar to the Philippines (WW2 was in the middle, but it was going to take at least 30 years). These things take time. It was a known fact that Filipino stick-fighters (Kali / Escrima / Arnis) would assassinate US soldiers during the occupation... it wasn't hunkey dory, nor was it a "clean" occupation: atrocities were committed on both sides on the regular.
And the Philippines had the benefit of the Katipunan (largest revolutionary force) basically accepting a peace in 1902. (Other groups, such as the Moros continued to fight until 1913). Imagine if the Taliban signed a peace treaty in 2006 or so and started working with us. So even in the early occupation, the Philippines was going more smoothly than Afghanistan.
Maybe a peace with the largest national identity (ex: Taliban) was necessary for any lasting change in Afghanistan? Was it necessary for us to fight with them for so long? I know they were begging for peace in December 2001. Why didn't we accept those terms back then? Was there any plausible path to peace with the Taliban that could have occurred earlier?
> Afghanistan became unwinnable the minute we lost sight of our goals.
No, I think it's worse than that. We straight up didn't even have a goal.
The most cynical and self-interested goal might have been, "set up a sustainable Afghan government that is no worse than the Taliban in terms of human rights, but not necessarily any better, as long as they don't harbor terrorists who attack America and our allies". The problem is that, as a goal, that's far too brutal and realistic for a Western country to explicitly get on board with in the 21st century. So we had to lie about maybe setting up a liberal democracy in Afghanistan even though everyone knew that was a stupid goal that would never actually work. In fact, it was such a stupid and unrealistic goal that we didn't even really fully commit to that goal out loud either.
We went in. We displaced the Taliban (temporarily). We destroyed Al Qaeda training sites. We built universities (that remain operational, for now). Etc. etc.
Any form of "leaving" is going to feel like a loss. But the big question is: why were we still in there to begin with? At least in the Philippines, the USA was sending governors over to... you know... govern.
We never even got that far in Afghanistan. We went in, killed a bunch of people/destroyed some sites, and then sat around for 10 years wondering what else we should do. Then we killed Bin Laden in Pakistan, and then still didn't know what to do about Afghanistan (and at this point: President Obama was constantly running / promising that we'd leave). We did build up a large chunk of Afghanistan: improving the airport, building universities, educating their population, hoping to win the local support of the people. But the local support never happened on a scale large enough for lasting change. Furthermore, it seems like large segments of their population didn't want to change, so we were making enemies while doing these actions.
Our next use of military needs to have clear and defined goals: something more than "lets hope those guys over there become our friends". If we focused on purely "destroy all of the Al Qaeda training grounds", that was mostly over in the first 6 months of conflict.
Or, if we are going to try and befriend the population / change it within, we need to be ready for a 40-year occupation, similar to the Philippines (WW2 was in the middle, but it was going to take at least 30 years). These things take time. It was a known fact that Filipino stick-fighters (Kali / Escrima / Arnis) would assassinate US soldiers during the occupation... it wasn't hunkey dory, nor was it a "clean" occupation: atrocities were committed on both sides on the regular.
And the Philippines had the benefit of the Katipunan (largest revolutionary force) basically accepting a peace in 1902. (Other groups, such as the Moros continued to fight until 1913). Imagine if the Taliban signed a peace treaty in 2006 or so and started working with us. So even in the early occupation, the Philippines was going more smoothly than Afghanistan.
Maybe a peace with the largest national identity (ex: Taliban) was necessary for any lasting change in Afghanistan? Was it necessary for us to fight with them for so long? I know they were begging for peace in December 2001. Why didn't we accept those terms back then? Was there any plausible path to peace with the Taliban that could have occurred earlier?