To be fair, the lack of strategic vision has also plagued the U.S. since WWII or Korea. We just keep losing wars because no one ever sets out clear achievable goals. The notable exception was the Powell Doctrine in Desert Storm. For that one, the goal was to kick Iraq out of Kuwait and restore the Kuwaiti monarchy, which was achieved. If you look especially at Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, there is this magical thinking that if we destroy the Evil Dictator and run an election, that everyone will naturally vote to ally with the U.S. and completely change their social organization to be in accordance with western values.

The place we spent the most time in the 21st century, Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights. That sort of societal transformation is not possible even with 100,000 troops when they don't even speak the local language. Can you imagine the hubris of trying to tell people in some remote village that the way men and women relate to each other has to change through a translator, because some tall buildings in a place they've never heard of got destroyed? The obvious result was total failure and the Taliban picking up right where they left off in 2001.