Panjshir, Afghanistan

Source: Bigstock

This time we are assured it will be different. America is no longer committed to nation-building. The objective is simpler: killing terrorists. That’s all, it seems, and for this purpose President Trump calls for renewed military involvement by Britain and other NATO members—even though Afghanistan is a hell of a long way away from the North Atlantic. Killing terrorists sounds straightforward and is popular. ISIS and al-Qaeda have cells in Afghanistan, protected by the Taliban. Biffing them there will be satisfying; also, alas, ineffective. Same with the Taliban. Every defeat has made it stronger. The Hydra sprouts new heads. Why should it be different this time?

If folly is doing the same things repeatedly in the hope of getting a different answer, well, renewed and deeper involvement in Afghanistan is an act of folly. President Trump might have been wiser to trust his instinct and pull out. But the military men will have assured him that this time it will be different. Chances are, it won’t. Sixteen years is a long time to fight a war that has no happy end in sight.

History does offer lessons, but we are not always willing to learn them. Sometimes admittedly people misinterpret them. Anthony Eden did that in 1956 when, mindful of appeasement in the ’30s, he saw Egypt’s Colonel Nasser as a new Mussolini or Hitler and resolved to get rid of him. But surely the Afghan lesson is clear: Foreigners don’t win wars there. So it makes more sense not to engage in them. What’s the betting that two or three years down the line, the war will still be going on and there will come a demand for a new surge, for the last push that will bring victory? But it won’t.