What will our expedition to Afghanistan teach us?

[Madhu]

Why the doom and gloom? it was an unnecessary, costly, mismanaged boondoggle, but its not like the US has lost the war. In fact, NATO is on the verge of victory.
From an American citizen's perspective, the war (and other expensive adventures undertaken in the name of the war on terror) are/were loaded with incompetence, corruption, honest mistakes, dishonest mistakes etc. But that does not necessarily mean its ended in historic defeat (it could, but it doesnt NECESSARILY mean that). In this case, NATO may yet "win".
It wont be pretty, but it wont be the straightforward defeat that, say, Vietnam was.
Overoptimistic?

Human beings are not toys so it's hard to contemplate words like costly and boondoggle without thinking of them.

At any rate, we are not returning to the 90's, no matter what anyone says, so you have a point.

To answer your question further, because NATO envisioned a vastly different sort of victory, there is worry that it will all fall apart after the elections (who are the candidates even?) and if that is the case was another plan viable all along, less costly in blood and treasure? NATO and the US at the outset didn't think it would be like this and there will always be the wonder, "did it have to be this way?" Plus there is the sneaking suspicion that others benefited at the strategic level when all is said and done (the complaints about others getting the lucrative contracts while we provided the security, all that other geostrategic stuff about who's up and who's down....)

A lot of this thread isn't doom and gloom but a kind of after action report. Come on, you are a physician, you know how that goes, you examine a problematic "case" to see what you learned from it and not to make a mistake in the future

Human nature being what it is, though, if the American and Western economies recover some of their mojo and violence stemming from the region is negligible in the future, the national security apparatus will call it a messy victory of sorts. What those that physically secured it think is another story.