Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley said Friday that he "could not look myself in the mirror" if he thought that the more than 2,300 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan's so-called "forever" war had died in vain.
In remarks to reporters defending the continuing U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, Milley said the sacrifices of those killed and the more than 23,000 wounded had kept the Taliban and other insurgent groups at bay and prevented another "9/11" attack on American soil.
"That's what we set out to do. And to date that has been successful," said Milley, a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Milley said if he'd thought otherwise, he could not have borne wakeful times at night when the honor roll of the dead passes "in front of my eyes."
"So, no, I don't think anyone has died in vain per se," he said.
At a Pentagon briefing with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Milley did not address Esper's comments earlier this week that the current U.S. troop strength of about 13,000 in Afghanistan could be cut by 4,000 in the coming weeks, a move that might free up troops to counter China in the Pacific.
However, Milley said an indefinite, continuing presence of U.S. troops was necessary to bolster the Afghan government in the interests of U.S. national security.
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Esper echoed Milley, stating that the mission was intended to make sure that Afghanistan would "never again become a safe haven for terrorists. Until we're confident that the mission is complete, we will retain a presence to do that."
Currently, the war is at a "strategic stalemate," Milley said. The Taliban can't defeat the Afghan security forces "so long as the U.S. and the allies maintain some degree of military support," and the Kabul government can't defeat the Taliban while they maintain a safe have in Pakistan, he said.
It's going to have to be an Afghan-to-Afghan solution" to end the war through a negotiated settlement, Milley said. "That's what we've been saying for years."
"This is a very difficult, complicated situation" in Afghanistan, Milley said, adding that the purpose of the U.S. presence was to protect the American people. To that end, "our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have not given their lives in vain in my view," he said.
Esper and Milley also denied that there was a systematic effort by top generals, diplomats and politicians during 18 years of war in Afghanistan to cover up or downplay views that the mission was failing, and the Afghan government was too corrupt to benefit from U.S. support.
In a remarkable series, the Washington Post reported that thousands of pages of documents obtained from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) through Freedom of Information Act filings showed officials were describing rosy scenarios in public while saying the contrary in private.
Milley called the Washington Post series a "very, very good piece of investigative journalism, but I also think it is not the 'Pentagon Papers.'"
The remark referenced an enormous trove of documents detailing the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.
Milley said the Pentagon Papers included the views of officials before decisions were made, while the reverse was true with the SIGAR documents, in which officials were reflecting back on experiences.
He also said he doubted there was any intention to engage in a coverup by those who gave the interviews, if only because of his belief that general officers and government officials were simply incapable of pulling off lies of that magnitude.
"I just don't think you can get that kind of coordination to do that kind of deception," he said. "... Those were honest assessments and they were never intended to deceive, neither the Congress nor the American people."
For his part, Esper said he thought the controversy over the Washington Post series had been overblown.
"It's not like this has been hiding somewhere and now all of a sudden there's been a revelation," he said.
"[The] insinuation that that there's been this large scale conspiracy, to me, is ridiculous."
-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
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