Why America’s Longest War Still Haunts Its Strategy In Iran

Greg Jaffe, a longtime New York Times reporter who spent 15 years covering Afghanistan, recently examined the lessons of America’s longest war for the current conflict in Iran. He notes that the war in Afghanistan ended exactly five years ago.

Today, that experience offers cautionary lessons for policymakers seeking to avoid another endless war.

For much of the Afghanistan conflict, the hardest task for the United States was not winning but quitting.

The country’s longest war ended in chaos and defeat five years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of desperate Afghans swarmed Kabul airport in a frantic bid to escape the advancing Taliban. A suicide bomber killed 13 American troops there.

In the years since, the fears that kept three presidents from ending the war have proven largely unfounded. Afghanistan did not become a major terrorist sanctuary or a launchpad for attacks on the United States.

Today, the US military is entangled in a new war in Iran. Once again, the prospects for a clear military victory appear bleak.

Even President Trump has at times signalled a desire to leave, only to reverse course and argue for staying.

“We don’t have to be there,” he said in an Oval Office address earlier this year. “Don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”

The long war in Afghanistan raises hard questions for the generals and policymakers now weighing the path forward in Iran: Why was withdrawing from Afghanistan so difficult? What does the prolonged struggle to accept defeat there reveal about the Trump administration’s current predicament in Iran?

Jaffe’s analysis highlights a recurring pattern in American foreign policy. Wars are relatively easy to start. Ending them proves far harder – politically, militarily and psychologically.

Goals shift over time, allies exert pressure, and domestic politics make admitting failure costly. As a result, conflicts drag on year after year.

The same dynamic, however, appears to be taking hold in Iran. Military objectives remain unclear, the chances of decisive victory look limited, yet the decision to withdraw remains politically and strategically difficult.

Afghanistan’s lesson is that sometimes accepting an imperfect end is preferable to prolonging a war whose original justifications no longer hold.

Whether Washington will apply that lesson in Iran or repeat the same mistakes remains one of the central questions facing American policymakers today.

(Based on Greg Jaffe’s analysis in The New York Times)