If We Could Go Back In Time

Noah Millman tries to understand what we should have done differently in Afghanistan and comes up empty:

This is what is meant by tragedy: when you feel compelled to do something that will only lead to pain and failure. You can talk all you want now about the need to win, and you can talk all you want now about simply declaring victory and going home, but the fact that will be plain in the first case is that we keep staying because we can’t figure out how to “win” and in the second case it will be plain that we left because we lost.