The war in Afghanistan hit the seventeen-year mark for the United States and its partners this month. Soldiers in the US-led coalition have been fighting and killing and dying for almost eight years longer than the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. The reasons for this protracted stalemate are manifold, but the momentum that would bring the war in Afghanistan to an end remains elusive in large part because the coalition has until now been unable to link the grammar of war to the political object it seeks. For the logic of strategy to work, ends should drive means, not the other way around. The value of the political object, or the worth of the ends sought, determines how long and what costs the United States should be willing to pay. In Afghanistan, if those political goals are articulated clearly, their worth should relate directly to the will of the US polity to persevere in the war to a successful end.
How the Seventeen-Year War Happened
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, the horror, devastation, and anguish engendered by those attacks animated the collective will of the US government, its armed forces, and its people, in theory, to employ the means necessary to achieve the object of punishing the al-Qaeda perpetrators, removing the Taliban regime that afforded al-Qaeda sanctuary, and preventing Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary for terrorists ever again. With almost three thousand dead and the unprecedented destruction of key buildings and symbols of US power, Americans perceived the value of the object to be very high.
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