OEF: a lingering Afghan small war for the West (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

This article is from 'Task & Purpose' and the author has written on SWJ before: General Bolduc, former CO SOCOM Africa. He opens with; his emphasis retained:

When I question and challenge our policy and strategy I acknowledge that our tactical level units have performed admirably, but our policymakers and senior general officers, as well as flag officers, have failed them. 2018 must be the year of change in our policy, strategy, leadership, and approach or we will never get off this road we have been on for the past 17 plus years. The missteps in Afghanistan and other places have been significant. Our senior civilians, policy makers and senior military leaders at the 4, 3, and 2-star level over three Administrations are responsible for the failures in policy, strategy and operational approach. We ignored the results even though numerous studies told us our approach was wrong.

(Later) Despite our senior leader’s efforts to portray the war as an American victory, the United States is not going to defeat the Taliban, other groups, and ISIS anytime soon.

Link:https://taskandpurpose.com/afghanist...countability/?

From this distant armchair I cannot see the US establishment will meet his challenge. Since the UK has recently declared another 400 soldiers deploy to Kabul, we will be there too.

There are 131 comments and quite a civilised exchange too (I rarely read Task & Purpose).