This war is unwinnable — we will never eliminate the Taliban. It is impossible to defeat an enemy that ambushes us and then runs and hides among civilians and within the mountains.

We have spent almost 1.5 trillion dollars in Afghanistan alone. Thousands of Americans have been killed while we fight Afghanistan’s war. We went to Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and we destroyed the structure and rid the earth of OBL. There is no strategic advantage to Afghanistan, nor does the country possess resources that could help better America. We are stuck in a constant loop of sending more troops and then pulling back. This has cost too many American (2,448), Afghani (43,000) and NATO (1000+) lives. 

Winning Afghanistan would require the United States and Afghan forces to retake around 45% of the country, according to a report from Al Jazeera, 15% of the country is controlled by the Taliban and the remaining 30% uncontrolled territory. And what would make you think that the Afghan forces can hold the rest of the country when most Taliban attacks are ambushes then they run back into the mountains or hide among civilians.

On top of that how on God’s green earth are we supposed to kill 60,000 Taliban troops. I must remind you they do not have uniforms that say “Taliban” or uniforms at all. These are cowards who hide and dress as if they are among the regular population of Afghanistan.

There is also a large portion of the country that wants us gone. It’s probably because the amount of bombs we dropped on the nation and we have killed innocent children, women and men. All of their relatives then become radicalized in their hatred for the United States. This is known as the Boomerang Effect of bombing. The more houses we destroy, the more civilians we kill the worse our standing in the Arab world becomes.

If our finest young men and women being killed is not enough, spending 1.07 trillion on this war to get what? Afghanistan also ranks 4th in aid receiving 532 million dollars from the United States alone. A recent report from the The Globe and Mail reported that BILLIONS of dollars have been wasted and sent to “ghost” accounts. 

We have given millions to help train soldiers that are ineffective and have even killed 50 Americans. 30 billion to rebuild when we should be rebuilding here at home. 

So what is the plan, what should we do? It’s plain and simple– we leave. It is time to stop fighting other countries wars. It is time we start taking care of our people. It’s time we bring our great patriots home. It has been almost 2 decades of American bloodshed. We destroyed Al-Qaeda and got Bin Laden.

There is no winning. It’s time we negotiate a deal with the Taliban and exit before our tombstone is forever engraved in the graveyard of empires.