Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Winning is not preserving some government in power or destroying some threat to the same. Winning is when the % of the population who perceive themselves as stakeholders in the solution of governance grows.
With this I must disagree. Winning is achieving the goals you set out to achieve. Period, end of story. The percentage of Afghans who perceive themselves as stakeholders in the solution of governance doesn't have to be our problem or our business, and inherently is not our problem or our business.

I think Jon had it right from the start:

Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
1) The national policy goals should be clear and concise, and the integrated plan to achieve them must be properly resourced. Make sure everyone understands the goals and the plan.
Winning is achieving your goals, and the first step toward winning is to start with a clear, practical, and limited set of goals. A second step would be to stick with those goals and not go looking for new ones.

As far as lessons go, I think Jon had the first one right. Keep the goals clear, practical, and limited, and make sure everybody involved knows what they are and how they are to be achieved.

Lesson 2, for me, can be summarized as "know when to go". There is nothing to gain by getting bogged down in occupation and nation-building. When you occupy you become a static target that invites insurgency. When you embrace the chimera of "nation-building" you inevitably end up harnessed to a government that cannot stand, but that you cannot allow to fall. It doesn't work. It's not necessary. Better to leave while you're still scary, while you still have the initiative, before anybody can claim to have chased you out. That might not have been best for Afghanistan, but "fixing" Afghanistan was never our problem. Convincing whoever ends up running the place that provoking us is a bad idea was our problem.

If we're ever in an analogous situation again, I hope we can compel ourselves to go there with clear, practical, limited goals. I hope we can achieve those goals and leave. Faint hope, I know, but we all have dreams.