\n\n“Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, just gave an honest yet brutal assessment of America\u2019s decades-long war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked at a Washington, DC, think tank virtual event about the planned drawdown to 2,500 US troops<\/a> in the country by January 15, President Donald Trump\u2019s top military adviser tried to assure the audience that the US had somewhat completed its mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe went to Afghanistan … to ensure that Afghanistan never again became a platform for terrorists to strike the United States,\u201d he told the Brookings Institution\u2019s Michael O\u2019Hanlon on Wednesday morning. \u201cWe believe that now after 20 years \u2014 two decades of consistent effort there \u2014 we\u2019ve achieved a modicum of success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let those last four words \u2014 \u201ca modicum of success\u201d \u2014 sink in for a moment. That\u2019s Trump\u2019s top military adviser saying out loud that after two decades of war, tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans killed, and more than a trillion dollars<\/a> spent, the US can only boast of \u201ca modicum of success\u201d for its efforts there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Milley\u2019s remark is certainly more accurate than the rosy assessments top US officials offered the public<\/a> as the war raged. Year after year after year, presidents<\/a> and top generals<\/a> insisted America\u2019s effort to support Afghan government forces against the Taliban had \u201cturned a corner\u201d and that success was on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But now, as US forces draw down from the country, Milley has made one thing painfully clear: The US never turned that corner. Instead, the US and its Afghan partners in Kabul made only modest gains over the past two decades.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “the US hasn\u2019t suffered a terrorist attack on the homeland planned in Afghanistan since 9\/11, and America helped set up a friendly government in Kabul, a capital city that in recent years has been safer than in the past. But the Taliban holds more ground in the country than when the war started<\/a>, and danger remains for the insurgents to overrun the government in Kabul if and when US troops fully depart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Milley acknowledged as much. \u201cWe have been in a condition of strategic stalemate where the government of Afghanistan was never going to militarily defeat the Taliban,\u201d he continued, \u201cand the Taliban, as long as we were supporting the government of Afghanistan, is never going to military defeat the regime.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n