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Afghanistan; Cold War; El Salvador; US military; Afghanistan Reconstruction; Taliban; 9/11; Osama bin Laden; Eliot Cohen; Cold War; Soviets; Pakistan; Moscow; President Jimmy Carter; President Joseph Biden; Hamid Karzai; mujahideen; Charlie Wilson's War; CIA Director Bill Casey; Soviet Union; Kabul; terrorists; terrorism; Enduring Freedom; CIA; al-Qaeda
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Full-Text Articles in Military, War, and Peace
What Went Wrong In Afghanistan?, Todd Greentree
What Went Wrong In Afghanistan?, Todd Greentree
The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters
Critics of the Afghan war have claimed it was always unwinnable. This article argues the war was unwinnable the way it was fought and posits an alternative based on the Afghan way of war and the US approach to counterinsurgency in El Salvador during the final decade of the Cold War. Respecting the political and military dictates of strategy could have made America’s longest foreign war unnecessary and is a warning for the wars we will fight in the future.