This is an articule about the unfortunate track record of lies about good progress in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the U.S. has been involved in for 18 years. The truth has been that they were loosing the whole time, they made many mistakes, but they put in a tremendous effort to cover up the losses. Actually, this war has been the longest running war the U.S. has been involved in.
The primary purpose that the U.S. should have kept at focus was to end the violence and casualties in the region. The primary metric of success is the decrease, or elimination, of casualties among the Afghanistan people. But then the Pentagon got distracted with so many other ideas and missions, and pretty soon they were quite lost from a strategy standpoint.
20191227/https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/