Interventions in support of unpopular, inept, unsustainable governments that have little or no capacity to sustain themselves, without popular support at home are foolish no matter what you allow your generals to do. Even if you manage the temporary "win" of a transient military defeat of the insurgents, you still don't achieve the long term objectives, because those rely on a local capacity that doesn't exist and that you don't have the power to bring into existence.
The only non-foolish thing to do in these cases is to avoid any long-term involvement. If there's something there that really needs to be done, do it and get the hell out. Once you choose to stay, you're in the merde no matter what your strategy and tactics are. Strategy and tactics are the servants of policy and if the policy goals are unachievable (e.g. "install a sustainable western-style democracy" in Afghanistan") no strategy or tactics will make much difference.
Fortunately our foolish Presidents drag us into survivable conflicts. If we'd had a Hitler we'd have charged off and fought with the Soviet Union and China instead of meddling in little messes, and there would likely not be a United States today.
That option was of course available, but it would have left the US in the completely unacceptable position of being responsible for the aftermath. Next thing you know we'd be backing an unpopular and unsustainable government with little or no capacity to sustain itself against any number of insurgents, with little or no popular support back home: foolish. Much better to have it the way it went. Of course it's a mess and it will continue to be a mess; post-Daffy Libya was always going to be a mess. It's not our mess, and that was the critical objective that had to be met.
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