Supposedly to defeat ISIS but who the hell knows. Kinda like his airstrike on a runway in Syria. I'm kinda lost.

According to the Fort Benning's Maneuver Self Study Program:

The American campaign in Afghanistan was launched in response to al-Qaeda's use of Afghan territory, granted by the Taliban government, to plan and launch the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. At the outset, the objectives of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan therefore included the defeat of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and affiliated groups in Afghanistan, as well as the development of a stable and legitimate Afghan government that would serve as a U.S. partner in denying the use of Afghan territory to terrorist networks. A principal strategic rationale underlying the efforts of the United States and its NATO partners in Afghanistan was the notion that fragile states with weak institutions, particularly those dangerous and volatile regions, have the potential to serve as safe havens for transnational terrorist groups.

At the outset, people perceived these goals to be achievable because they made the assumption that these groups were organized in a fashion similar to traditional states. It only took three months to topple Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Government because it had this traditional state structure.

I remember seeing one of the Delta Force operatives involved in The Battle of Tora Bora interviewed on PBS a long time ago. He claimed they had Bin Laden cornered but the native Afghan mercenaries they had to use wanted to negotiate with Bin Laden instead of taking him out. This ultimately led to his escape. Because we wouldn't commit enough resources, our reliance on native mercenaries backfired.

Now that Bin Laden is presumed dead, and for all intents and purposes we can assume this to be correct, there has still been growth in the underlying terrorist structure.

What exactly are we trying to win in Afghanistan?

I understand the jist of this question to be that the ultimate goal of defeating the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is vague simply because the groups themselves are not well defined states with an observable organizational structure.

I would say you are correct and that this is the fundamental flaw we face with the war in Afghanistan.

I believe the only solution is to kill all the native inhabitants and replace them with United States Colonists. Anything short of this type of commitment is doomed to fail. This type of commitment will never be realized, and so any effort is doomed to fail.

Knowing that any of these efforts are doomed to fail does not change the fact that we must recognize that something must be done involving the state of affairs in Afghanistan.

At this point, inaction, similar to the inaction realized under President Obama's tenure, will result in the manifestation of new hostile state that will eventually struggle to control the region in a manor similar to the Islamic State.

When this occurs, there will be another war, anyway. What the people in power are doing is postponing the need for an "all-in" commitment until their tenure is over, and they can pass the buck to the next poor sucker that inherits the responsibility. It's like the worst game of "hot potato" ever played, with real lives at stake and generational implications.

My ultimate take away from everything I've seen in the past three decades is that we can't just close our eyes and assume the problem will go away. At some point, there will be an "all-in" commitment simply to ensure our own survival.

To me, a win in Afghanistan would be the total removal of the native population, and their replacement by US citizen colonists. This is the only way to ensure a future of peace. But I know this will not happen, there is no political will for it to happen and there has been two centuries of anti-colonialist brainwashing that populations have had to endure.

well, so far we can check one off the list. more wars. the recent Afghanistan speech. I dont think its as black and white as that but here we are anyway.