In the September 2021 hearings, Milley told senators, “I recommended that we maintain a steady state of 2,500” troops and warned of “the potential for the Afghan security forces to collapse.” He later characterized the outcome as a “strategic failure.” This is a convenient pattern: attach yourself to the prediction that proved right, disclaim responsibility for the decision that proved wrong, and narrate the entire affair from the vantage point of your personal foresight. If the most memorable artifacts of a tenure are an apologetic video, a culture-war exchange, and artfully righteous testimony, one has practiced the craft of public positioning more than the craft of invisibility that marks the best civil-military judgment. By foregrounding his recommendation to maintain 2,500 troops, he positioned a safe bet on historical vindication while distancing himself from a strategic outcome he labeled a “failure.” Yet the decades-long drift in Afghanistan was not one week’s policy call; it was the cumulative product of military and civilian choices, including the assumptions senior commanders carried and communicated year after year.
Author: RealClearWire
Published at: 2025-12-13 21:14:55
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