Fourteen years ago today, the United States started bombing Afghanistan in hopes of flushing out Osama bin Laden. It is America's longest war, and in the latest sad chapter, the United States now must explain its fatal error in attacking a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders, a mistake that killed 22 people and prompted the humanitarian group to pull out of the war-torn city of Kunduz. War is fought in a fog. Destroying is easy and rebuilding is hard. These are lessons to heed amid the calls for the United States to take a more aggressive military stance in Syria.
On Tuesday, three days after the attack, which also wounded dozens of people, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, started to sketch out a clearer version of events in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the third version of the story in as many days, Campbell said it was a U.S. decision to order the airstrike and that the hospital was "mistakenly" attacked. After going back and forth for days about the circumstances of the strike, the Pentagon is looking to tamp down the clamor, contain the political fallout and forestall any breach between Afghan and American forces.
The Obama administration needs to more fully explain how an AC-130 gunship famed for its accuracy managed to unleash its deadly volley on the hospital for a sustained period, all while American controllers on the ground apparently directed it toward the target.
But the larger story is how the Afghan military continues to rely on American Special Forces and American air power. After the Taliban overran Kunduz, the United States rushed Special Forces into the fight. And with the Obama administration considering another drawdown in the 10,000 American troops still remaining in Afghanistan, the question is how well and how long the Afghan government can keep the Taliban at bay.
Members of Congress harping on the administration to take a more aggressive posture in Syria should be honest about the choices America faces. There is no halfway strategy to achieve political change in Syria; either this nation commits untold lives and other precious resources to an uncertain end or it accepts the limits of American military power.
The Afghan government has long used the U.S. invasion as an excuse to allow others to do the fighting. The U.S. experience there is frustrating enough to not repeat the mistake. There is not always an easy way out from a war-torn country, and the United States needs to have a clear end in sight before committing again to what the armchair quarterbacks call a winnable war.