That is how I see it. Seems we have not had the belly to fight a war to win since WWII
We were winning in A-stan back in 2003-2004. I was working on Bagram, and making weekly trips to Kabul. We rarely had an escort, and the only problem we had was a mechanical breakdown. It was actually safe. I wouldn't try that today.
The SOF forces were dealing with the locals and the regular military hadn't contaminated the area yet.
As soon as the regular Army stepped in to the picture, the Afghans started becoming hostile. SOF would walk in with a bunch of big weapons and actually talk with and work with the locals. Big Army would waltz in with big armor, run over livestock, damage homes, point weapons at civilians, and expect everything to be OK. To the local Afghans, this brought back memories of the Russian occupation.
In another instance, a local Afghan was collecting firewood in an uncleared area, and stepped on a mine. His family loaded him into the community wheelbarrow and wheeled him out to the main road in an effort to get one of the many military vehicles to stop and transport the guy to the hospital on Bagram Air Base.
No military vehicle would stop, even on the base. Not one bothered to radio in for Medevac to pick the guy up. They just didn't care. The family wheeled this guy over 3 kilometers to Bagram Air Base, and I got the call from co-workers to pick the guy up and transport him to the military hospital. He lost his leg above the knee, but it could have been worse.
Little things like humanitarian action would have reaped big rewards. Instead, the military p*ssed it away.
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OTOH, look at some of the puppets that DoS has put in as head of state: Diem in S. Vietnam, Karzai, they even supported Maliki in Iraq and that's falling apart. There is another big problem in DoS.