[bots]

No war is really won, particularly these days. The objective in going in to Afghanistan in the first place was to remove the terrorist training facilities that were openly operating there and reduce their capability to hit western targets. That has largely been achieved there, so no-one died in vain. The threat has evolved now so that Afghanistan is no longer the prime focus and resources are better deployed elsewhere. That to me is why it was easy to set a deadline to cease operations there and re-group ready for the next deployment.