I'm not a strategist, but... I think it's important to remember that the idea wasn't to build up just a military or security force. That was a necessary part of

I'm not a strategist, but... I think it's important to remember that the idea wasn't to build up just a military or security force. That was a necessary part of it, so that they could begin providing security for themselves instead of relying on US troops to do it for them indefinitely. But that was supposed to go hand-in-glove with also building up functional government and economic institutions, literacy, faith in democracy and rule-of-law, etc. Two problems: 1. The US military was basically left to do all of the above by itself, with only token commitment from other US government agencies and NATO partners. As a military we are pretty good at fighting, less good at building up another country's military force, and pretty bad at doing all the non-military stuff. We tried, and there was a whole cultural revolution within the Army between about 2005-2012 to get better at this, but we have to balance that with still being able to fight head-to-head against a peer military in large-scale combat. 2. The whole idea of "nation building" may just not be realistic, at least not on any timeline that we'd find acceptable. So the "alternative model" is probably putting up alternative goalposts. I think that's where we've effectively landed. Afghanistan isn't what we hoped it would be, but we can still play whack-a-mole with any Al-Qaeda (and now Islamic State) pockets that gather there to stage attacks on our interests, which is maybe what we should have limited ourselves to doing from the start.