What Went Wrong In Afghanistan?

U.S. Army Spc. Dominic Dambrowski leads a patrol into the city of Chorah in the Tarin Kowt district of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, Feb. 22, 2013. Dambrowski is assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division’s Company C, 2nd Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jessi Ann McCormick

What Went Wrong In Afghanistan? -- Foreign Policy

We asked everyone from an ex-president of Pakistan to a former Afghan spy chief to weigh in.

What was the West's biggest failure in Afghanistan? Rory Stewart, who once walked across Afghanistan in winter and now walks the corridors of Whitehall, makes the case that the intervention was doomed from the outset, that "the West always lacked the knowledge, power, or legitimacy to fundamentally transform Afghanistan." Seth G. Jones, author of In the Graveyard of Empires, argues that history should have provided a lesson: "The U.S. failure to stop Pakistan is particularly egregious because the United States was involved in an almost identical program 30 years ago -- with the ISI's help -- against the Soviets in Afghanistan." Here's what some of the foremost experts on the conflict -- from former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick W. Kagan -- identified as the biggest mistakes of the long war.

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My Comment: A collection of opinions that makes this post one of my must reads for the weekend.