I agree with most of your points in this thread, but with regard to Afghanistan the objectives of the US Army were frankly really nebulous and ill-defined to th

I agree with most of your points in this thread, but with regard to Afghanistan the objectives of the US Army were frankly really nebulous and ill-defined to the point of total confusion. We'd waver back and forth between "destroy the enemy with no mercy" and "be nice, don't shoot unless shot at, make sure to talk about schools and democracy to the Taliban". In the same general parameters of your critique on this post, if the US had actually treated Afghanistan like an Imperial Colony I actually think the outcome would've been much more palatable to all involved. Treat the country like a colony, and make them pay taxes for administering their security, forcibly educate (meaning: re-educate) the populous, hand off administration of the government in pieces over about 50 years as the civil infrastructure and information coordination systems mature. Alas, this would've been maybe 10x more expensive than what we already paid, and for reasons that should be obvious the model we used in Japan and Germany really doesn't quite fit in that place.