For the better part of at least the past 15 years, senior US civilian and uniformed leaders have been publicly telling the American people that the war in Afghanistan was necessary for US security, making progress, and supporting an Afghan security force that was performing well. All of it, from the beginning, was a lie.

In 2010 I wrote an article titled War on the Brink of Failure in the Armed Forces Journal that plainly stated, that “absent a major change in the status quo that currently dominates in Afghanistan, the US-led military effort there will fail … and despite our best effort to spin it otherwise, we will lose the war in Afghanistan.”

Two years later, while still an active-duty army officer and after my second combat deployment to Afghanistan, I wrote a detailed report which revealed that things had gotten much worse. Senior ranking US military leaders, I revealed, had intentionally deceived the American public.