US Troop Draw Down in Afghanistan by 2021

What America Didn’t Understand About Its Longest War

As the United States leaves Afghanistan after 20 years of war, there can be little doubt that we lost the war — or to put it more gently, did not attain our objectives. In recent weeks, the Taliban have advanced across the north of the country. Bereft of U.S. support, the Afghan army and police have reportedly lost more than two dozen districts over the course of a month and are now fighting on the outskirts of key cities such as Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. Senior U.S. officials have warned of a civil war, while intelligence reports are said to forecast the fall of the Afghan government — which the United States has worked to strengthen for two decades — within a year.

Why did we lose? I’ve been trying to answer that question for 12 years, starting in 2009 when I was a civilian officer in the far-off district of Garmser in Helmand Province. I continued to ponder the question in 2013 and 2014, when I served as political adviser to Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and later as Dunford’s senior adviser when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As I traveled the country with senior U.S. military commanders, I saw that in battle after battle, numerically superior and better-supplied soldiers and police were being defeated by poorly resourced and unexceptionally led Taliban — a dynamic certain to eventually doom the Afghan government unless the United States were to stay indefinitely...

The very presence of Americans in Afghanistan trod on a sense of Afghan identity that incorporated national pride, a long history of fighting outsiders and a religious commitment to defend the homeland. It prodded men and women to defend their honor, their religion and their home. It dared young men to fight. It sapped the will of Afghan soldiers and police. The Taliban’s ability to link their cause to the very meaning of being Afghan was a crucial factor in America’s defeat.

This explanation has been underappreciated by American leaders and experts, myself included. We believed things were possible in Afghanistan — defeat of the Taliban or enabling the Afghan government to stand on its own — that probably were not. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should have abandoned Afghanistan long ago, given what we knew at the time. It does mean that the strategy could have been better managed to avoid expending resources on objectives that were unlikely to be attained. Less money could have been spent. Fewer lives could have been lost. But that America couldn’t have done much more than muddle along for years in the face of a relentless enemy is the unsatisfying, sometimes frustrating coda to our longest war...

Afghans who helped US troops to be airlifted out of country

The United States is launching Operation Allies Refuge to airlift thousands of Afghan nationals who helped US and NATO forces during the 20-year Western occupation of Afghanistan as the Taliban advances, White House and US embassy officials in Kabul said.

Flights for those already in a US visa application process will begin in the last week of July, according to the US embassy...

Others “who have not yet completed their background checks” would first be flown either to US military bases overseas or to third countries “where they will be safely housed until their visa processing is complete”, Psaki said...

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby today defended the Pentagon's decision to send 3,000 US troops into Afghanistan as "prudent preparation," suggesting it is necessary to send so many in order to plan for the worst case scenario.

"This is about prudent preparation," said Kirby, responding to a reporter's question on why the US was sending such a "high" number of troops. "We want to make sure that we've got enough on hand to adapt to any contingencies."

"Your question about the numbers being too high, we believe it is appropriate to the security situation that we see now and that we can anticipate possibly in the future," he continued.

"The secretary believes the safety and security of our people, not just American troops, but our allies and partners and our State Department colleagues is of paramount concern," Kirby added. "He is not going to add additional risk to that safe movement."

Two of the infantry battalions headed to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul are US Marines and one is US Army, Kirby said. All three battalions are coming from the Central Command area of responsibility, which is the part of the US military based in the Middle East.

Twenty years of training and equipping a national defense system that falls apart immediately. Everyone knew it would all fall apart but nobody wanted to be blamed. Part of war's self-sustenance.