Milley said that the end game was a "logistical" success but a "strategic" failure. Many are arguing this criticism of the president's decision to exit. But the origins of the strategic failure were many years in the making.
Apropos of that point, Milley & the others suggest they argued to keep 2500 troops in place. But no one is asking how long that deployment would last, how the Taliban would react, whether that would require more troops, & whether it could produce a different outcome than we saw.
The reality is that post the Doha Agreement, the likelihood that the Taliban would not have mounted an offensive had the US broached its promise to leave is zero and that such an offensive would have required more troops (as Milley did acknowledge.)
Further, it was noted that the Taliban has been gaining ground since 2014-while we had many more troops present. To suggest those gains wouldn't continue is absurd. Consequently, no matter how long you kept the 2500 there, ultimately the "strategic" defeat would've taken place.
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