Milley: The War in Afghanistan is 17 Years Old, and Now Storm Clouds are 'on the Horizon’ by Meghann Meyers - Army Times
On Oct. 7, 2001, detachments of Army Special Forces soldiers dropped into Afghanistan to launch the first counterattack against terrorist forces following 9/11.
Two days after Operation Enduring Freedom’s anniversary, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley brought attention to the ongoing conflict in a speech Tuesday at the AUSA annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
“Amid all the headline news, it seems like we hardly notice we are still a nation at war in some places, and in others we are preventing war,” Milley said. “Seventeen years later, we have suffered about 58,000 killed and wounded, most of them Army soldiers, in a war that continues."
There are still 180,000 soldiers deployed in 140 countries, and as the Army prepares to make a shift from counterinsurgency options to more conventional wars, the number shows no sign of coming down…