We're Never Going To 'Win' In Afghanistan

Greg Dobbs,HuffPost Sun, Feb 4 6:00 AM CST

Heaven knows, even if our politicians and generals don’t, that while we haven’t conclusively lost the war in Afghanistan, we surely haven’t won it. And if we haven’t won the war by now, we’re surely not going to. This fact was hammered home— not for the first time— late last month. In four attacks over just nine days, more than 130 people were killed by terrorists. Some by the Taliban, some by ISIS. As if it matters.

They struck inside Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. They struck at an Afghan military complex. They struck in Save The Children’s offices in Jalalabad. And in the most lethal of the attacks, they struck with a bomb-packed ambulance inside Kabul’s “ring of steel,” supposedly the most secure sector of the city.

But “most secure” in Afghanistan is only relative. Neither the capital, nor the population nor the government is secure. Nor is the U.S. mission, whatever it actually is today. That is the terrorists’ intent: to prove that nothing is secure, even after 16-plus years of costly American efforts— with a 100,000 troops there at the peak— to exterminate the terrorists and pacify the nation.