There was expectations that the fights there, the operation there might be extended for several months, even for several years. But within a few weeks it ended, because obviously the Taliban wasn't a real force.
Someone should tell the president that U.S. forces would need to be in Iraq for two to five years, and they will not have an easy time there.
When we go to war we always make some wrong assumptions. The most common is that the war will be short.
There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
While the nature of warfare is changing and wars are moving into cities, they are also becoming longer and their consequences more impactful.
Since 1775, the average insurgency has lasted 7 years and since 1945 it has lasted 10 years.
Insurgencies have a way of going on for a long time historically.
As conflicts last longer, as the scale of needs increase, we are having to adapt. There is an increasing blurring between immediate humanitarian assistance and long-term development needs.
Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.
My family left Afghanistan in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. We certainly thought we would be going back. But when we saw those Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, the prospect for return looked very dim. Few of us, I have to say, envisioned that nearly a quarter century of bloodletting would follow.
Obviously, the greater the length of a war the higher is likely to be the number of casualties in it on either side.
Everything depends on the Americans. If they want to make war for 20 years then we shall make war for 20 years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to tea afterwards.
The only hope of a short war is to prepare for a long one.
History has shown that at least one-half of every century is consumed in war.
I heard somebody say that the war ended today, but everybody knows it's going still.
I did a week-long assessment in 2005 at (then Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld's request. Following our return, I told him that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of what we then termed "the long war."
One looks ahead to a war and imagines it as a single, final, absolute event. It is nothing of the kind. War is a condition, like peace, with good days and bad days, moods of optimism and despair.
The European NATO Counties are not interested in being liberated after 6 months of fighting on their territory. They are only interested in preventing the initial attack.
It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
Nobody really even knows with whom the US is at war, or where. Everyone just knows that it is vital that it continue in unlimited form indefinitely.
To say that we're going to end countries or eradicate terrorism, and that it's a long war over many years, with many different instruments, suggests a much more complex and drawn-out conflict for which, I think, most Americans aren't prepared.
You can't settle a 50-year conflict in 52 weeks.
Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because] from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time.
In this kind of war a natural gap exists between the expectations of the of the politicians, of the public opinion, of the press and the real capacity of the armed forces to deliver. The gap is a characteristic of this kind of war. The gap is related the four dimensions: To the duration of the war; to the number of casualties; to the damage to the innocent civilians on the other side; and, what is more important, is the solution to the problem of the question of whether or not a decisive victory can or cannot be achieved.
How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force!
