US veterans of the war in Afghanistan are becoming aware that fighting there was a waste.

The war Afghanistan is unwinnable, but that was not clear at the start. Most of Afghanistan rejected the Taliban immediately in 2001 and allied with the US. But it morphed into an unwinnable war over the next few years as the Taliban regrouped. The Afghans that supported the national government were not motivated to fight to win as the Taliban were. Given that situation, the Taliban were sure to win eventually unless they ran into some unforeseeable problem.

It was visible by 2006 that the war was going badly. A few years later there it was clear that victory was impossible. Why did the US deny the situation and waste more American and Afghan lives?

It is always hard to accept defeat; in the US government, which believes itself unbeatable, it is hard to acknowledge that defeat has happened.

Then there is the bizarre idea that American soldiers' lives lost were not wasted as long as American soldiers continue being killed ineffectively in the same war.