Afghanistan withdrawal: Austin, Milley testify again after tense hearing: LIVE UPDATES

Milley says U.S. ‘lost’ war in Afghanistan

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said during Wednesday’s hearing that the U.S. “lost” the war in Afghanistan due to a number of strategic errors over the course of 20 years, not the last several months under the Biden administration.

“My assessment is this is a 20-year war and it wasn't lost in the last 20 days or even 20 months, for that matter,” he testified before the House Armed Services Committee.

Milley cited the U.S. involvement in Iraq and its failure to address Pakistan as a terrorist sanctuary as part of a “series of strategic decisions” that led to the Taliban-takeover of Afghanistan last month.

“I don't think that whenever you get some phenomena 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, but certainly the end state is a whole lot different than we wanted,” he said. “So whenever a phenomenon like that happens is an awful lot of causal factors are going to have to figure that out.”