Top U.S. general Mark Milley conceded in a stark admission on Wednesday that the United States "lost" the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
"It is clear, it is obvious to all of us, that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted, with the Taliban (the terrorist movement outlawed in Russia) in power in Kabul," General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee.
"The war was a strategic failure," Milley told a committee hearing about the U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation from the capital Kabul.
"It wasn't lost in the last 20 days or even 20 months," Milley said.
"There's a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back," said the general, the top military advisor to President Joe Biden, who ordered an end to the 20-year U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.
"Whenever you get some phenomenon like a war that is lost - and it has been, in the sense of we accomplished our strategic task of protecting America against Al-Qaeda (the terrorist movement outlawed in Russia), but certainly the end state is a whole lot different than what we wanted," Milley said.
Milley listed a number of factors responsible for the U.S. defeat, AFP reported.
