[remarkEon]

>There's a saying that rings true, "The military is always fighting the last war"

It's a saying that people in the military are well aware of (OEF Veteran here). We were well aware of what happened in Vietnam with counterinsurgency. The problem is that counterinsurgency just doesn't work unless you treat the country like an imperial colony. We didn't do that, in Iraq or in Afghanistan. It wasn't worth the resources to "do Imperialism" in those places, and so we got a half-assed "strategy" that wasn't really related to any seriously considered national objective.

>The problem with that doctrine in Afghanistan is that hiding even two men is difficult in arid environments.

The Taliban were able to do this with ease.

[roarcher]

> It's a saying that people in the military are well aware of (OEF Veteran here).

Same. That's where I heard it.

> The Taliban were able to do this with ease.

The Taliban weren't doing what we were doing. They generally did not, to my knowledge, go out and sit in an OP on a rocky hillside for 3-5 days straight, where any random goat herder might happen to decide to graze his herd one afternoon. Their MO was to set up an ambush that would be executed the same day and that was not likely to be discovered by a passing American, since Americans weren't wandering randomly through the hills at all times.