{"id":79034,"date":"2025-06-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/06\/23\/afghanistan-war-commission-hears-from-vets-as-it-tackles-troop-surge\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T20:55:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:55:31","slug":"afghanistan-war-commission-hears-from-vets-as-it-tackles-troop-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/veterans\/2025\/06\/23\/afghanistan-war-commission-hears-from-vets-as-it-tackles-troop-surge\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan War Commission hears from vets as it tackles troop surge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the peak of the war in Afghanistan, following President Barack Obama\u2019s troop surge in late 2009, about 110,000 service members were deployed to the country at a given time. At least some of those troops were gleaning insights from their vantage point on the ground that would take senior leaders back stateside years more to uncover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a core contention of the Afghanistan War Commission<\/a>, a congressionally created bipartisan entity tasked with making a useful accounting of America\u2019s sprawling \u201cForever War.\u201d The commission is now about halfway through its two-year mandate and expects to publish an interim report at its official midpoint in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June 23 the commission held a multipanel hearing on what for many is a defining point of the war: the surge in which the U.S. aggressively recommitted to the faltering conflict and began to implement the counterinsurgency efforts that would stagger on for more than a decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of that hearing, the two co-chairs of the commission, Shamila Chaudhary and Colin Jackson, sat down with military veterans who\u2019d served in the surge period to understand the period from their perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\t