Last Friday, Colonel Gian Gentile, an award-winning historian, associate professor of history, and director of the military history program at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, spoke at the Cato Institute about the misapplication of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan for the purpose of destroying al Qaeda. In a new Cato video, conducted with Cato multimedia director Caleb Brown, Colonel Gentile elaborates on America’s narrow aim of defeating al Qaeda. He also explains how that aim can be pursued without a costly, multi-decade, troop-heavy campaign, and puts the application of counterinsurgency doctrine in a historical context.

On a slightly different note, mainly for those readers concerned about leaving the Taliban unmolested, the United States and its coalition allies have come to accept the region’s geopolitical landscape, in which it seems there is no way to avoid the Taliban and other anti-Afghan government forces becoming part of some future political order. Consider this statement by Philip Mudd, the former deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and the FBI’s National Security Branch: “On September 12, 2001, can you imagine asking the question: Is the Taliban really a threat? Today, 12 years later, I’d say, well clearly it’s not a threat!”

Food for thought. Check out the video below.