In his first interview since taking command of NATO's Resolute Support mission in September, Gen. Austin Scott Miller provided NBC News with a surprisingly candid assessment of the seemingly never-ending conflict, which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001.
"This is not going to be won militarily. This is going to a political solution," Miller said.
He mused that the Taliban is also tired of fighting and may be interested in starting to "work through the political piece" of the 17-year-old war.
But it's not clear if the Taliban is open to negotiations. Last month, a top Taliban commander told RT, in a rare interview, that the group's leaders had no desire to negotiate with the Americans.
Comment: Because they're winning and thus have the advantage of setting conditions, unlike the U.S., which has been fighting a losing war for 17 years.
Described for years as a stalemate, the conflict has been tipping in the Taliban's favor in recent months. Even by US military estimates, the Afghan government controls or influences just over half of the country's 407 districts - a record low since the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, began tracking district control in November 2015.
To make matters worse, casualties among Afghan government forces have skyrocketed in recent months. Afghan security forces suffered 1,000 fatalities in August and September, according to the Pentagon.
Miller's desire for a political settlement was echoed earlier by the State Department, which said in August that the US was doing everything it could to facilitate peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
The new US commander has experienced the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan first-hand. In October, Miller survived a Taliban attack in Kandahar, which left a prominent Afghan warlord and local intelligence chief dead.
Comment: Trump has been consistent in his criticism of the costly and insane decisions of US policymakers to start useless wars in foreign nations over the past 17 years. So Miller's admission is not just a coincidence. He's only saying what has been obvious from day one, but which can only now be said because the US has a president that is somewhat sane when it comes to foreign interventions. The stated justification for going to war in Afghanistan - because Bin Laden - was a lie. No mention of drug trade profits or the benefits of keeping the Middle East and Central Asia destabilized. But those goals only make sense to hardcore ideologues. To any normal human, nothing good has come out of them. They've wasted trillions of dollars and destroyed millions of lives. It's time to go home, America, and stay there.