This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 8th, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's not clear after 12 years in Afghanistan exactly what the United States has achieved.

It's not even clear that the thinking that has

delivered a decade of war has changed. Colonel John Jintiel is a U.S. Army officer

and a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. We spoke last week.

The views expressed here by Colonel Genteel do not necessarily represent those of the

United States government or the Department of Defense. You describe yourself as a student of history,

and you say that war in Vietnam was a failure

because of a lack of strategy,

but also that it was a part of failure of strategy in that our military planners

didn't seem to understand the limits of military power following World War II.

Are we still in that world even after a 12 year

experience in Afghanistan? This is a problem with the American military in

Vietnam and that is an unquestioning belief in its operational efficacy.

The belief that operations can somehow achieve policy aims.

And this is, one can link the United States' problem

in Vietnam up to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And if we're going to criticize generals,

we can certainly criticize General Westmoreland

for having this problem for thinking that there

is an operational solution to the war in Vietnam.

For General Westmoreland,

...