US Afghan intervention is a failure of concept, not execution

It is nearly 18 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan, and neither the United States nor Afghanistan is better for it.

The U.S. has lost thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and all sense of prudence and purpose in our Middle Eastern foreign policy. We are stuck, as military historian Andrew Bacevich put it, in a grueling “pattern of promiscuous intervention” in which new military commitments are accrued more by automation than strategy, “oblivious to the possibility that in some parts of the world, U.S. forces may no longer be needed, whereas in others, their presence may be detrimental.”