Afghanistan became unwinnable the minute we lost sight of our goals.
No, I think it's worse than that. We straight up didn't even have a goal.
The most cynical and self-interested goal might have been, "set up a sustainable Afghan government that is no worse than the Taliban in terms of human rights, but not necessarily any better, as long as they don't harbor terrorists who attack America and our allies". The problem is that, as a goal, that's far too brutal and realistic for a Western country to explicitly get on board with in the 21st century. So we had to lie about maybe setting up a liberal democracy in Afghanistan even though everyone knew that was a stupid goal that would never actually work. In fact, it was such a stupid and unrealistic goal that we didn't even really fully commit to that goal out loud either.
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No, I think it's worse than that. We straight up didn't even have a goal.
The most cynical and self-interested goal might have been, "set up a sustainable Afghan government that is no worse than the Taliban in terms of human rights, but not necessarily any better, as long as they don't harbor terrorists who attack America and our allies". The problem is that, as a goal, that's far too brutal and realistic for a Western country to explicitly get on board with in the 21st century. So we had to lie about maybe setting up a liberal democracy in Afghanistan even though everyone knew that was a stupid goal that would never actually work. In fact, it was such a stupid and unrealistic goal that we didn't even really fully commit to that goal out loud either.