right organizational architecture, the right concepts, the right leaders. we squandered opportunities on which we might have capitalized early on. >> john mike fairfax, retired army special forces. how do you explain why we've been in afghanistan for 20 years? >> i think because we fought 21-year wars. i think had we had people with a longer time horizon that were seeing this as a marathon as opposed to a seven-month sprint on a deployment or a 12-month sprint on a deployment, to include the commanders who we've rotated through scandalously often, i think we would have had a potentially different outcome because people could have had some accountability for the decisions they made. >> katie cook, marine. do you think the u.s. is now perceived with greater strength or weakness after our involvement in afghanistan for the past 20 years? >> sadly, i think we are viewed with greater weakness.