Esper, Milley Reject Assertions in ‘Afghanistan Papers’

The U.S. defense secretary and its top military officer
rejected the premise of the recently published “Afghanistan Papers” in The
Washington Post — that defense leaders engaged in a deliberate effort to
deceive the public on the lack of progress in the 18-year-long war. And Joint
Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who repeatedly led forces there,
emotionally insisted that none of the troops killed in Afghanistan died in
vain.

In a Dec. 20 media briefing at the Pentagon, Defense
Secretary Mark T. Esper and Milley also defended the prolonged military
engagements in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria as necessary to protect the nation
from terrorists and said U.S. forces would be there until that mission was
completed.

But Esper, citing the new National Defense Strategy’s
recognition of “great power competition” with Russia and China, said his aim is
to determine “how can we reduce our presence in other parts of the world to
either return troops home to retrain and equip for those bigger missions or to
allocate to the Indo-Pacific.” Esper has said he is considering removing about 5,000
of the 13,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan.

And Milley, speaking for the military, said “none of us want
forever wars. It has to do with the national interests.”

The two leaders were asked several times about the week-long
series of stories in The Washington Post that extensively quoted senior
military and diplomatic officials as privately expressing strong doubts about
the way the Afghanistan conflict was going, while giving more positive views in
public.

“I know there is an assertion out there of some sort of
coordinated lie over the course of 18 years,” but that was “more than a stretch.
I find that a mischaracterization,” Milley said. With hundreds of general
officers, State Department officials and other involved, “I just don’t think you
can get that level of coordination on a lie.” He said the assessments he and
others gave were “based on facts that we knew at the time, and those were
honest assessments and were never intended to deceive either the Congress or
the American people.”

Milley contrasted the Post’s expose on Afghanistan with the
1970s “Pentagon Papers,” which revealed secret documents on the government’s consistently
gloom views on Vietnam. He said those were “contemporary papers written in
advance of decision making. These, the Afghan papers, were an attempt by SIGAR
in about 2,000 pages to do post-facto interviews, looking back, to determine
lessons learned,” he said, referring to the reports of the special investigator
general for Afghanistan.

“For years, we were clear there
is not a reasonable chance of a military victory against the Taliban or the
insurgency… and that remains true today.” Milley said. “There is only one way
this is going to end, in a negotiated solution.” Milley conceded that
Afghanistan has been “a strategic stalemate,” where the Taliban cannot win as
long as the Unites States provides some degree of military support, but cannot
defeat the Taliban “so long as they have sanctuary in Pakistan and some degree
of popularity with the people.”

And, with evident emotion, Milley
said: “Our soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines who have given their lives in
Afghanistan did not give their lives in vain.”

Esper pointed out that some of the reporters in
the audience had been to Afghanistan as had many members of Congress and the SIGAR
investigators. “This has been very transparent. It’s not like this war was
hiding somewhere. For all the folks who have been in this conflict over the
years, some insinuation there’s been some kind of conspiracy, is ridiculous.”