an anachronistic viewpoint to what, at the time, would have been sound strategic decision-making and by every educated account in the long-term strategic interests of the country. There are hundreds - thousands - of factors that changed between the initial invasion and 6 - 8 years later when the war really turned for the worse; then there would have been a thousand more factors that changed between the late Bush and early Obama years and the mid-2010's when we started clearly signaling that we were going to exit; then there would have been a thousand more factors that changed in the interim between then and having former allies dropping out of the cargo doors of C-17's to their deaths thousands of feet below. Those are all inherently unknowable factors years and decades before the ultimate outcome was decided. That doesn't mean the actions theretofore were "performative".

Your use of "performative" in your original post implies a public relations element of military decision-making that potentially, at times, supersedes the operational and strategic goals. There are innumerable times in American military history where that has happened - the Doolittle Raid, Operation Linebacker, large chunks of the initial phase of Iraq in 2003 - 2004 up until Fallujah I, et al - but the idea of the initial invasion of Afghanistan being categorized as "performative" is preposterous.

...because I'm looking at it from 2024. In that strictly literal sense, everything anyone says here about stuff that happened in the past is anachronistic.

I'm not convinced that the decision to go into Afghanistan was "sound strategic decision-making and by every educated account in the long-term strategic interests of the country." I am re-reading chunks of Andrew Bacevich's book, America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History--I have my copy here in the office. Here are some snippets regarding the period between 9/11 and our venture into Afghanistan:

"Every new administration arrives in office bearing its own foreign policy vision, which rarely survives the encounter with actual events. The vision of the new Bush administration, which came to power on January 20, 2001, was more ambitious and more concrete than most. It derived from specific convictions that President Clinton had willfully disregarded. Chief among those convictions was a belief in military assertiveness as the foundation of American global leadership....The events of 9/11 created the opportunity to act on this perceived imperative....Rumsfeld's very first impulse on 9/11 itself was to frame the problem in the broadest possible terms. 'Need to move swiftly...go massive--sweep it all up, things related and not.'"

I don't question that once the project was assigned to the military, that it was carried out as you indicated, with diligent efforts put forward and militarily strategic goals established and often met. As I noted previously, I feel that some of the Afghan warmaking had performative elements, and I would say those were coming from those in Washington D.C. and at the Pentagon; not the generals and service members who were in the field, who performed most admirably. But I wonder if, in flexing our muscle for all to see, we had reasonably thought out what the end-state of that military effort would be.

And to make sure this point is understood... I think every member of our military served admirably, with valor and courage. I appreciate and honor their service.

I just think, other than a small group intent on taking out bin Laden, they shouldn't have been sent at all to Afghanistan or Iraq, at any scale.