I think your bigger point about Vietnam is correct–the issue is we were propping up a South Vietnamese regime with little legitimacy on the ground and little ability to fight its own wars. That’s not a problem you fix by winning battles.
Where I might nit pick a little bit, is we were mostly fighting the North Vietnamese army after 1968. The Tet Offensive was sort of the “high water mark” for the Viet Cong, they actually had so many outright killed and units obliterated in the offensive they mostly ceased to exist as a fighting force after then. In response the North Vietnamese took over a lot of things the VC were previously doing, and any offensives into South Vietnam were lead by the North Vietnamese. So we were actually mostly fighting a real other country with a real army in Vietnam, not Taliban or ISIS style insurgents.
Which is where we are with Afghanistan, from all signs. Engaging in that sort of endeavor sets us up for Wars-Without-End under the sunk-costs fallacy (“we can’t quit after so many died for this!” Um, yes we can). What that achieves is to gain a reputation that (a) yes, we will hurt you badly but if you can make it a long-endurance contest we can be outlasted, and that (b) we will “abandon” our erstwile allies once we get tired of it(*).
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(* And we always seem to be in this pickle. That we never seem to make any sort of provision to effectively protect those who stuck their necks out for us and will be seen as collaborators subject to reprisal. Is it that our leaders keep telling themselves “this time it will be different”? Or that deep down inside they actually feel “well, you knew what you were exposing yourselves to, not my problem”?)
The Afghan government paid “ghost forces” (mainly with money from the US). I doubt this was directly the fault of the central government. They pay subordinate commanders to maintain a certain number of soldiers, but many of those soldiers “don’t exist”. Good ol’ corruption.
I remember the term from reading Chinese history. Many ghost soldiers “fought” in the civil wars between the Nationalist Party, northern warlords and the Communist Party of China. IIRC they “fought” for the Nationalists, who of course lost.
The US gave all of this money and other kinds of support and got virtually nothing out of it. Right now the Taliban (typically based in southern and eastern Afghanistan) is quickly taking over the country. Some predict the government of Aghanistan will fall in three months, though I suspect they’ll last longer. (The Soviet-backed Afghan republic lasted two years after the Soviet Union left, and I believe South Vietnam lasted that long after the Americans left.) I doubt the US will be able to rescue all of those interpreters within a month.
How one defines victory seems to be a sticking point in this discussion.
Military victory, which we are in fact good at, doesn’t always translate to political victory. Which IMO, really what counts. Britain, the Confederacy, Mexico, Spain, Germany and Japan don’t give us no guff.
The U.S. excels at fighting conventional wars against small-to-medium-sized states.
Against un-conventional, irrregular foes like VC, Taliban or insurgents - nope, doesn’t play to its strengths. Against a true peer competitor like China, it’s questionable. America may still have an edge over China but it won’t be a walkover like Iraq was in 1991.
I think it is “hard” in the sense that it is politically hard. You have to make a decision of whether you will send more men, more materiel, and spend more money to subdue a place that is ancillary to your main goals. How many dead young men are politically acceptable to do something something in this faraway place?
Most times, like the Brits in 1781, the Soviet and us in Afghanistan, and us in Vietnam, the answer is “No, we don’t want to commit all of that. Let’s get out of Dodge.”
The US can defeat opponents who care about a having a good country and a well ordered society.
The US cannot defeat opponents who are more than happy to live in squalor basically forever. As long as the people in power have it ok they are more than happy to let everyone else live the most meager of lives.
How do you end that war as long as they have an endless supply of troops willing to live near starvation and without homes and families? They can go forever like that.
Countries like Japan and Germany which, ultimately, surrendered were able to re-build and have world-class countries today.
I do not think an Afghani warlord cares about that. He cares about the power he has. To hell with anything else.
Broadly I would say it is because the US is no longer in “fixing” anything.
A great movie called The Mouse That Roared had a small country declare war on the US with the intention of losing and then the US would make things better. But it does not got to plan (making it a fun movie…highly recommend it).
Since WWII the US has not made any place “better” because of their involvement. Too much money, too many special interests screw it up. No Marshall Plan.
We were in Afghanistan for 20 years. When was it ever made fundamentally better because we were there? Why would the local populace get on board?
Which was an anomaly. There was a Marshall plan because of the specific circumstances at the end of WW2. But historically it is not what would be expected to happen and there really is no reason to expect it to be permanent official policy. So you’re right – The US is not really putting in what it takes to “fix” the defeated countries any more.
(And TBF, the defeated countries of WW2, I’ve said before, still retained their identity and sociocultural continuity [even if in some cases the latter involved a lot of coughing and fidgeting and pretending that the prior 15 years you were entirely oblivious to what was up]. There was something to rebuild.)
The reconstruction aid given by the US to Afghanistan rivals the entire sum of the Marshall plan (adjusted for inflation) which was of course spread over many countries.
Ultimately the difference was that those countries were already developed before the war and could therefore recover and become self-sustaining very quickly while clearly the same is not true of Afghanistan.
The US has done quite a lot of good in Afghanistan, it is vastly better than what it was in 2000 when it comes to things like girls getting an education. What it has failed to do is create a minimally competent government; it is quite astonishing how the Afghan army which has huge advantage in numbers and equipment over the Taliban is dissolving in weeks with barely a fight. In the mid-90s when the Taliban first came to power it took them years of fighting to win.
They retained their sociocultural identity and continuity as nations. The people were able to come together under new leadership to build a new Japan and a new Germany but it was still A Japan, A Germany. Unlike Afghanistan where there was “no there there”.
I mean, what’s your measure of “won” because I’m guessing its not in terms of blood spilled/lives lost? I’d say way WAY more Taliban have died over the last 20yrs than US personnel. If you’re viewing it like a “dance marathon” competition where the winner is whoever can stay on the dance floor the longest then yeah, I suppose they won. It only feels like that though because the Taliban are made up of a collection of individuals that don’t give a shit if the 10 guys in the room with them die as long as they personally live. The guy sitting at the (now gone) Afghan Presidents desk hamming it up for the camera isn’t wasting 2 seconds of his oxygen thinking about all the Talli’s that were killed over the last 20 yrs. He got his. So yeah, I guess “they” won.