Author: Rich Stowell

By Rich Stowell

At the conclusion of OEF, have we won in Afghanistan?

It has become fashionable to denigrate the accomplishments, or rather the prospects, of the Afghanistan War. 

Soldiers—both enlisted and officer—returning from Afghanistan are often heard complaining that the country is doomed, destined to go the way of Iraq vis à vis ISIS. 

Is the pessimism warranted? Is Afghanistan lost? Can we say that we have accomplished anything of substance there? In short, after 13 years of combat in Afghanistan, did we win? 

At the risk of sounding too optimistic, the answer according to any objective measure has to be yes. To understand the degree to which we have been successful, it is critical to identify those standards by which we should judge the war. 

Two goals are commonly understood to be at the heart of Operation Enduring Freedom. First is the broadly agreed upon goal of the initial stages of the campaign, to depose the Taliban and eliminate al Qaeda as a credible threat. 

The second is broader: to prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a sanctuary for terror groups like al Qaeda.