KEITH KELLOG: Our Military Must Remain Focused on Its Mission. “In war, momentum on the battlefield has a quality all its own. The Taliban have it. What we need to ask is, how did this end state happen and what lesson should we learn? In the end, it was a question of will. We wanted our efforts to succeed more than the Ghani government did. Prior administrations and their military advisers wanted Afghans to begin acting like Jeffersonian democrats. That seldom works and comes at a high cost. Each nation is unique, be it Iraq or Afghanistan. Our senior leaders, especially our generals, forgot this.”