America's war in Afghanistan is now Trump's increasingly bloody problem. Is it time to declare defeat? - NBC News

By David A. Andelman, visiting scholar at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School

Donald Trump has no shortage of battles to fight, both on the home front and around the world. But perhaps the single most intransigent one is also literally America’s longest.

In the last several weeks, the lethal nature of the war in Afghanistan — a war that drags on in a far-off, ill-understood land — suddenly became tragically and vividly alive.

In November, the body of Utah mayor and U.S. Army Major Brent Taylor, killed in Afghanistan, was brought home in a moving ceremony that highlighted the serious challenges American forces and interests are facing. Three other soldiers were killed by a Taliban-planted roadside bomb in late November, the most lethal such incident this year in a conflict that may never achieve a satisfactory conclusion.

Thus far three U.S. presidents, six secretaries of defense and five chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have presided over a war in which no one has been able to define victory, let alone remotely succeed in winning. The Soviets tried the same decades ago, with equally catastrophic results.

Trump has said he wants to get out of Afghanistan, a stance that has received substantial pushback. He has also signed off on troop increases. So which stance is correct — and will either of them actually end the conflict?

History may provide some insight. The Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted more than nine years (between December 1979 and February 1989). It cost the Soviets 15,000 dead soldiers and 35,000 wounded. The large numbers of young men coming home in body bags alsoplayed an important role in ending communist rule and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Our 17 years of engagement, meanwhile, is more often compared to the nine years of full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. That quagmire did end, though, and American forces finally went home, more or less defeated, having lost 47,000 dead on the battlefield. - Read More

America's war in Afghanistan is now Trump's increasingly ... - NBC News