Now the longest war in U.S. history, the 14 year U.S. presence  in Afghanistan will continue to rage on. In an  Oct. 15 statement, President Obama announced plans to keep 9,800 servicemen in Afghanistan through next year, breaking his 2012 campaign promise to cut forces there in half by 2016. Prolonging the war will also discredit its ceremonial ending. Last December in Kabul, U.S. and NATO allies unfurled a “resolute support” flag symbolizing the transition from active war to peripheral military support. Reversing this decision is a grave mistake by the Obama administration.

The announcement comes as a shock to many.  On Oct. 3, American forces bombed a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 22, including three children. The hospital was run by, Doctors Without Borders, which operates in over seventy countries.  President Joanne Liu is calling the strike “an attack on the Geneva Conventions.” She is demanding that the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, a never-before-used group created at the Geneva Conventions, investigate whether the U.S. committed war crimes.  Unfortunately, this tragedy is only the most recent proof of our irrational engagement in Afghanistan. 

Recent efforts have been focused on training the Afghan military to defend against the Taliban. In fact, $65 billion dollars have been spent on building army and police forces since 2002 according to John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. But this money may have well gone to waste. 

Afghan forces have suffered heavy losses to the Taliban both in death toll and in securing important cities. Explanations from senior American army officials point to a lack of unity from Afghan soldiers. They claim there is poor allegiance to what is seen as an illegitimate  Afghan government.  

This story of failed military training is all too familiar  — Iraq, Syria, Somalia and others faced similar problems. In Syria, for instance, only five committed moderate fighters against the Islamic State remain, according to a Sept. 16 New York Times article,  despite a $500 million effort to build an army. In June 2014, some 30,000 Iraqi soldiers fled attack from the Islamic State after being abandoned by their commanders. The U.S. spent $25 billion dollars to train them. 

“Our track record at building security forces over the past 15 years is miserable,” said Karl W. Eikenberry, a former military commander and United States ambassador in Afghanistan. 

Even still, these efforts have been pursued vigilantly out of fear of the rise of extremism. The United States does not want what happened in Iraq — the rise of a radical insurgency group — to happen in Afghanistan as well. Some officials believe the death of Taliban leader Mullah Omar this July will bring about dissension and possibly unify the Taliban and the Islamic State. “Widespread knowledge of Mullah Omar’s death will exacerbate existing fractures within the Taliban and accelerate a power grab … ISIS will likely exploit these tensions,” says the Institute for the Study of War.  

However, this threat has been dismissed by United States Army General John F. Campbell himself. He states that the situations in the two countries are not alike and that Afghan do not believe in the ideology of the Islamic State. After all, the Taliban have their own destructive mission: establish definitive power over the Afghan people by imposing strict sharia law. In many cases, this jihadist struggle has been at odds with both ISIS and American forces alike.

Past intervention in the Middle East has shown that the U.S. has done more harm than good, and we are not only working at a deficit economically.

Caught in the midst of the violence in Kunduz were staff and patients in the Doctors Without Borders medical center. For an hour, an American AC-130 gunship fired at the hospital, believed to have been an outpost for Taliban fighters. The strike continued up to thirty minutes after staff informed authorities that their target was a hospital. The attack ended up killing civilians, not Taliban members. One survivor, Lajos Zoltan, said of the attack, “There are no words to describe how terrible it was … in the intensive care unit six patients were burning in their beds.”    

Despite this, many still believe American forces should fight. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing three days after the attack, Campbell asked that “we provide our senior leadership options different than the current plan we are going with,” hinting at his previous requests to deploy more troops. Though he admitted that the strike was a mistake and accepted full responsibility, he still demanded American involvement. Obama obliged. More troops will go into Afghanistan, and more people will be killed. 

 Though President Obama personally apologized to Doctors Without Borders, many such apologies have gone unheard. Despite fourteen years of conflict, no one else has been offered condolences. And this strike was not the first of its kind. To date, over 26,000 civilian casualties have been reported according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs.  This year alone has seen the record- breaking death of 1,500 Afghans, the result of both Taliban and American fighting.

Today, Taliban forces control more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001, according to data collected by the United Nations. This recent wave of successful insurgency could be damning. An emboldened Taliban may go after even more territory and ultimately overthrow  any remaining institutional stability. So far,  major thoroughfares and government buildings have been raided. U.N. offices have been evacuated. The entire city of Kunduz was overrun in early October, the first provincial capital to fall, again, since 2001.  

Clearly, the Afghan military is not ready to take on the Taliban on its own. Then again, the American military has not hit Taliban targets with accuracy either.

It seems that the only effective strategy is for Americans to back the war economically. If this were the case, then the hospital in Kunduz would not have been attacked.  Many other civilian casualties would also be avoided — the difference between American super-killing machines and guerilla warfare.  The question is whether this peripheral support could assure victory over the Taliban. History seems to indicate so.  The prime example of this strategy is in Israel, where U.S. dollars fund projects like the Iron Dome to defend the country against Hamas attacks.  The success here has been significant. Israel remains safe from rocket attacks to this day because of this support.  

If this project cost ranges in the hundreds of millions, think of how Afghan soldiers could be supported with billions. Defensive mechanisms could be installed in every major city. Large rewards could be offered to whoever gave tips on the location of Taliban soldiers. 

Drones equipped with face recognition technology could be used to spot invaders. The possibilities are infinite. Furthermore, Afghan troops could be supported with American intelligence and support from a strategic standpoint. With our backing, they would surely be more prepared to fight and would probably be more inspired to in the first place. Once the battle is outfitted with American technology, there is no way that the primitively equipped Taliban could succeed. The Afghan army would be assured victory.

Despite all evidence against continuing the war, American’s fear of extremism has not let up. The hospital bombing will be deemed collateral damage, and American troops will double back. Since the lessons from the mistaken hospital strike have not take hold, Doctors Without Borders’ demand for justice will be answered by war hawks. For now, the military presence in Afghanistan will continue to combat terrorism, but someday in a year unknown, we will give up this delusion and come home.