“It is clear” that the US “lost” the 20-year war in Afghanistan, acknowledges General Mark Milley

Mark Milley, the top US general, admitted Wednesday that USA “Lost” the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

“It is clear, it is obvious to all of us, that the war in Afghanistan it did not end on the terms we wanted, with the Taliban in power in Kabul ”, said the general Mark Milley, chief of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Congressional hearing.

“The war was a strategic failure”, Held Milley Before the House Armed Forces Committee on the Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation of civilians from the capital, Kabul.

“It was not lost in the last 20 days or even in 20 months”, said. “There is a cumulative effect on a series of strategic decisions that go back a long time.”

Milley is President Joe Biden’s chief military adviser, who ended the US troop presence in Afghanistan last month after the 2001 invasion.

“Whenever a phenomenon like a war occurs that is lost – and it has been – in the sense that we fulfill our strategic task of protecting the United States against Al Qaeda, but certainly the end is very different from what we wanted”Milley pointed out.

“So whenever a phenomenon like that occurs, there are a lot of causal factors”, said. “And we are going to have to see how we solve that. Many lessons learned here ”.

Milley listed a number of factors that he attributed to America’s defeat, which traced back to a missed opportunity to capture or kill the leader of the Al Qaeda jihadist network, Osama Bin Laden, at the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan, in December 2001.

He also mentioned the 2003 decision to invade Iraq, which drove US troops out of Afghanistan, “without effectively dealing with Pakistan as a sanctuary (for the Taliban),” as well as pulling personnel out of Afghanistan a few years ago.

Biden in April ordered the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by August 31, following an agreement reached with the Taliban by former President Donald Trump.

Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of the US Central Command, which covers Afghanistan, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that they personally agreed with the recommendation to leave 2,500 troops deployed to Afghanistan.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had received “divided” advice on what to do in Afghanistan, which the United States invaded after the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington.

“Ultimately, it is up to the commander-in-chief to make a decision.”said Psaki. “He made the decision that it was time to end a 20-year war.”

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