The profile of Gen. Mark Milley ’80 (“Enemies, Foreign and Domestic,” September issue) was well done, itself a chapter in our nation’s history. Readers will no doubt ponder his view that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was “a logistical success but a strategic failure.” Based on my two years in Panjshir Valley, in the Afghan foothills of the Hindu Kush, I certainly agree with his strategic point. Many Americans, though, would reverse his verdict, calling it a logistical failure but a strategic success — that is, the actual pullout was a hot mess but the overall decision, after two decades of costly effort, was essentially right. Maybe there is a consensus on a different judgment, this one from Hamid Karzai on the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud by al-Qaida two days before 9/11 — “Oh what an unlucky country.”
Editor’s note: The writer, a former U.S. foreign service officer, established the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Panjshir, Afghanistan, which he led from 2005 to 2007.
The profile of Gen. Mark Milley ’80 (“Enemies, Foreign and Domestic,” September issue) was well done, itself a chapter in our nation’s history. Readers will no doubt ponder his view that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was “a logistical success but a strategic failure.” Based on my two years in Panjshir Valley, in the Afghan foothills of the Hindu Kush, I certainly agree with his strategic point. Many Americans, though, would reverse his verdict, calling it a logistical failure but a strategic success — that is, the actual pullout was a hot mess but the overall decision, after two decades of costly effort, was essentially right. Maybe there is a consensus on a different judgment, this one from Hamid Karzai on the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud by al-Qaida two days before 9/11 — “Oh what an unlucky country.”
Editor’s note: The writer, a former U.S. foreign service officer, established the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Panjshir, Afghanistan, which he led from 2005 to 2007.