What began as one of the smallest, least expensive, shortest, most successful military campaigns in American history morphed into a generation-long conflict, the longest war in our history. Things went so wrong for the same reasons other post–Cold War imbroglios did: hubris in believing we had the power to transform a country and its culture, strategic mistakes, and the weakness of our nonmilitary instruments of power that are so essential to any chance of success. There was a terrible mismatch between our aspirations to change Afghanistan and our ability to do so.
