AFGHANISTAN: Perpetual War Without Success or End.

In February 2012, after returning from my second combat deployment to Afghanistan, I published an 84-page analysis of the U.S. war effort in which I concluded, “despite what our senior defense leaders say in public, the military surge failed to reduce the insurgency, and with the drawdown in full swing, our future efforts are virtually certain to likewise fail.” The past six years have regrettably confirmed my assessment as accurate.

Despite the overly optimistic claims of every U.S. commander since 2005, the continued degradation in the Afghan government, the unrepentant corruption, and the undisguisable reemergence of the Taliban cannot be disguised. The so-called Afghan “unity” government continues to fragment, as President Ashraf Ghani dismissed a regional governor in Balkh Province, but Mohammad Atta Noor refuses to leave.

Ghani has thus far been unable to enforce his order. As the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has routinely testified, the Afghan government remains hopelessly corrupt, the Afghan military of limited ability, and the Taliban insurgency expands its territorial influence and control.

We must put a stop to the endless, and unnecessary, bleeding of our troops and U.S. taxpayers’ money, and recognize that our attempts to externally force a military solution on the political problems plaguing Afghanistan will never succeed.

Read the whole thing.

Winning in Afghanistan would require a level of violence we haven’t applied since World War II, and even then I’m not sure we would achieve anything lasting.