Seriously, if our goal was to deny safe haven, and stabilize Pakistan (a related regional goal) because they're a nuclear weapons state, our ways and means certainly worked contrary to our ends. Killing AQ's core was/is certainly in our interest and should have been pursued even more aggressively. Instead we were distracted by COINdista platitudes that were completely disconnected from our strategic ends. Somewhere along the line the platitudes became the ways even if they were disconnected from our ends. We quit learning/adapting somewhere along the way, and now we have a non-coherent arrangement of tactical efforts working towards no collective end. In some cases our PRTs become the supported effort which gave the insurgents, terrorists, and criminals a great opportunity to make money and freedom of movement, because we forgot we still had to fight. Instead we confused an illogical platitude "we can't shoot our way to victory" with focus on the population, when it should mean that war is more than warfare.

A lack of coherent strategy equated to a VSO program that undermines the our effort to develop a viable central state. A corrupt central state that undermines our efforts to win over the population, and neither have much to do with denying AQ safe haven long term. Our massive nation building efforts floods money into both Pakistan and Afghanistan. That money reinforces corrupt politicians which undermines the nation building, which is irrelevant to begin with. However, that money is diverted to our adversaries empowering them to continue fighting why we are trying to win over the population. Finally we announce our desire to reach a political settlement from a position of weakness, because we announced we're finished and pulling out. We should have had the political settlement as our end to begin with a strategy to get to it. Not strive for it after we are tired. The list goes on and on. It all comes down to having disjointed ends, ways, and means. If we spent more time on developing realistic ends and viable ways (a realistic strategic approach to those ends) we would probably be in a different place now. Our military adapts quickly to the tactical situation if you remove the micromanagers. If those micromanaging were more focused on strategy than tactics maybe we would be somewhere else today?

Coming from a Special Forces background I know this sounds self-serving, but there were a number of options for SOF and especially SF, the intelligence community, and law enforcement to maintain steady pressure on AQ at an acceptable cost, well below the stage lights, that would have ultimately been more effective. You can counter hindsight is 20/20, but we should use that hindsight to help shape future decisions. We need our General Purpose Forces to be combat ready for whatever threat emerges on the scene, and quit confusing our fixation with irregular warfare as we it now as the way of the future. The world is trending towards to some state on state conflicts, transforming our Army into a giant PRT will not ensure our security

Such winning can be understood to mean that the victorious side largely dictates the terms that it prefers for an armistice and then a peace settlement, and is in a position to police and enforce a postwar order that in the main reflects its values and choices. History tells us that it can be as hard, if not harder, to make peace than it is to make war successfully.