How about this: next year, young men and women born after the 9/11 attacks will undoubtedly start patrolling the Hindu Kush and other Afghan locales. And how’s the forever war going? This same week, an increasing invigorated Taliban killed a couple dozen Afghan soldiers and seized a government base. Back in 2011, when I had the inauspicious task of patrolling the Arghandab Valley, the US had some 100,000 troops in the country. We still couldn’t decisively defeat the Taliban. Now, we’ve got about 15,000 soldiers there – think we’re poised for victory now? Does it even matter? Americans will simply yawn.
