Wars Have Beginnings and Ends

Jim Webb: “We should start with a truism. Wars have beginnings and they have ends. The ends for one and sometimes both sides are not always what the combatants initially envisioned. And in the case of Afghanistan, the war that we began was not the same war that we are finally bringing to an end.”

“When we went into Afghanistan in 2001 our national concern was to eliminate terrorist entities who desired to attack us. The common understanding at the time was that we would operate with maneuver elements capable of attacking and neutralizing terrorist entities. It was never to occupy territory with permanent bases or to attempt to change the societal and governmental structure of the Afghan people.”

This ‘mission creep’ began after a few years of successful operations and was obvious in 2004 when I was in the country as an embed journalist. The change in mission eventually increased our troop presence tenfold and sent our forces on an impossible political journey that no amount of military success could overcome.”