The ranking commander in Afghanistan has publicly conceded that the Afghan war cannot be won.
The Afghanistan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be achieved through a political resolution with the Taliban, the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations has conceded.
In his first interview since taking command of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in September, Gen. Austin Scott Miller provided NBC News with a surprisingly candid assessment of the seemingly never-ending conflict, which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001.
“This is not going to be won militarily. This is going to a political solution,” Miller said. He mused that the Taliban is also tired of fighting and may be interested in starting to “work through the political piece” of the 17-year-old war.
But it’s not clear if the Taliban is open to negotiations. Last month, a top Taliban commander told RT, in a rare interview, that the group’s leaders had no desire to negotiate with the Americans.
Congratulations, it only took 17 years for the U.S. military to discover why Afghanistan is called “the graveyard of empires”. That’s some fine military intelligence at work there. Go the hell home. The invasion was bad enough, but the decision to try and occupy Afghanistan was reprehensibly stupid. No more wars without formal Congressional declaration.