Panel studying US war in Afghanistan holds first public hearing

A commission created by Congress to conduct an independent review of the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan held its first public hearing on Friday, pledging to be “unflinching” in examining how and why key decisions were made and who made them.
But, while accountability “is centrally important, our focus is less on assigning credit or blame … than on extracting and applying its lessons” for future conflicts, said co-chair Colin Jackson.
he panel’s first public hearing came just over a month before the third anniversary of the chaotic final U.S. troop withdrawal that ended America’s longest war as the Taliban seized Kabul.
Some 800,000 U.S. servicemembers served in Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States by Afghanistan-based al Qaeda.
During the war, 2,238 U.S. servicemembers died and nearly 21,000 were wounded. Independent estimates put the number of Afghan security forces and civilians killed at more than 100,000.