“Asked why the United States did not foresee the rapid collapse of the Afghan army, Milley said that in his judgment the U.S. military lost its ability to see and understand the true condition of the Afghan forces when it ended the practice some years ago of having advisers alongside the Afghans on the battlefield. ‘You can’t measure the human heart with a machine, you have to be there.'” Joint Chiefs chairman calls Afghan war a strategic failure. (It’s lot easier to measure the human heart to fight when that heart has the support of US airpower.)

+ “Top military leaders confirmed in a Senate hearing Tuesday they recommended earlier this year that the U.S. keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and that they believed withdrawing those forces would lead to the collapse of the Afghan military.” (We didn’t know the Afghan army would collapse that fast. But we did know it would collapse that fast so we advised keeping troops on the ground. But the war was a strategic failure and it was right to move to a diplomatic mission, which means no more troops on the ground. Welcome to the Kabullshit post-war blame game everyone knew was coming.)