Some quick opinions from an economic and political point of view, Red Rat did anticipate me somewhat:
1) War is still the continuation of politics with the 'intermixation' of military means. The will of the populations, the internal political games by the various actors at home and in the host nation and so forth all play a role.
2) In COIN political and economic and many other non-military means are of considerable importantance but often outside of the direct political control or even influence of the foreign nation. It can be much harder to get a specific job done at all, not to talk about getting it done efficiently. Friction is very high. Once again circumstances matter.
3) The specific political goals set by the political actors, in this case by the foreign nation should of course be determined by the (ultimate) political purpose. The resulting strategy will include in case of war those military means. Shifting the political goals, in this case seemingly from a good beating to nation-building, might not match the long-term political purpose and will of course force big shifts down the command chain and lots of different ressources.
4) Economic, political and social development in the host or occupied nation depends a great deal on the set of circumstances at the start. Simply pumping in money is generally highly inefficient or even counter-productive as it sets the wrong incentives. Amazingly macro 101 gets often ignored and in the case of a big wealthy nation just more money gets thrown at the problem (Karzai) instead.
5) Not reaching ambitious political goals in a foreign land far away does of course hurt and will have negative consequences but for the big wealthy nation it is nothing vital. Think about potential positive effects, fewer arguments for Tsarnaevs, but especially about opportunity costs and sunk ones. Life will go mostly on as normal (as if it didn't already during the war), sadly not for those who suffered big physical and mental wounds in the war. For pretty much all the rest of the guys at home little will be changed.
*Almost ten years ago I could not believe that a Foreign Policy article (IIRC) did rather favourably compare the chances of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan to the ones in Germany and Japan after the war. The author had clearly no clue of economics. Especially in Germany a lot of technology, human and physical capital was ready to get kickstarted or better to act alone if not suppressed too much. Letting the economic engine get running again was actually are rather easy job compared to building an new working one from the scratch. The political and social foundations were also completely different.
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