HAVE WE GAINED ANYTHING IN EIGHT YEARS?

In the course of cleaning out clutter (mostly, alas, at a geologic pace) I found a Chicago Sun-Times column by Steve Hundley who argues "Osama bin Laden is dead, and it's time to declare mission accomplished in Afghanistan."  That column is beyond the reach of a cursory online search (at least using my skills) although a Huffington Post roundup of reactions that is still available offers a few remarks in a similar spirit.

Mr Huntley does not say "declare victory" and his post invokes a few threats of years past, including Al-Qaida in Yemen, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and the usual suspects working with Iran.

Toward the end of the column, he asks,

If Afghanistan collapses into chaos, so be it.  If nearly 10 years of nation building at the cost of thousands of U.S. casualties and billions of dollars hasn't put it on the path to modern nationhood, how will the sacrifice of more American lives and financial treasure do the job?

His concluding paragraph, however, ought be sobering.

If Afghanistan collapses in ruins, it might be an object lesson for other nations harboring terrorists:  This is what happens to your country if it's used as a base to attack and kill Americans.  If fact, that might do more to protect American lives than all the nation building taxpayers can no longer afford.

That presupposes Afghanistan is a country.  I like the description somebody -- was it Richard "Belmont Club" Fernandez -- made of Afghanistan as the space on the map where there are no countries.

But with the Permanent Establishment still unhappy about Our President wanting to bring troops home from Syria and other outposts of Jihadistan, it's worth asking whether, at the margin, the additional nation building efforts achieved anything.  A column by Jerrod A. Laber in The American Conservative will reward careful study.

The paradox of preventive war is that military success is distinct from strategic success. You can best your opponent in battle, but that doesn’t mean you have reached a political solution that creates the conditions for lasting security and peace. Instead, engaging in preventive conflict can incentivize the very behavior it seeks to prevent, creating the conditions for less security in the future.

Indeed so. I make no claims to even armchair strategist status, and yet, could we treat relatively recent events as making a case for the continued garrisoning of Charlottesville with a regiment of Sheridan's cavalry, seven score and fourteen years after the liberation of Richmond and the surrenders of Lee and Johnston to respectively Grant and Sherman?