It has been nearly 17 years that the United States has been occupying Afghanistan, and despite spending trillions of dollars in tax payer money, it has announced it will spend another $54 billion this year on the seemingly unwinnable war. This is while a number of US lawmakers are questioning whether President Donald Trump’s policy will bring an end to the war. Press TV has talked to Brent Budowsky, columnist of The Hill, as well as Ken O’Keefe, peace activist and former US Marine, to get their opinion on this issue.

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Budowsky believes the United States should have a “rational policy” which does not involve maintaining its military presence forever in Afghanistan while dealing with the terrorism problem in the short-term.

He also noted the US needs to bring some level of stability to Afghanistan through diplomatic process and a political solution, emphasizing that there is no military solution to the long-running conflict in the war-torn country.

“The best thing that can be done is that there can be influence from the American government on the Afghan government to reach political agreements internally with all the different groups which is really the only alternative ultimately. We are not going to lose, we are not going to win, no one is going to win, no one is going to lose, they are going to keep killing each other for another 20 years unless there is an agreement,” he said.

The analyst further opined that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a “fundamental mistake” which only prolonged the war in Afghanistan, arguing that it made the United Sates get stuck in a quagmire in both countries.

He went on to say that the United States should have finished the job in Afghanistan in 2001-2002 and withdrew its troops from that country instead of “wrongly” putting them into Iraq.

According to the analyst, there has to be a political solution between the Afghan government and the Taliban in a way that would facilitate a de-escalation of the US involvement; otherwise, the outcome will be an “endless war” that will go on for years.

Meanwhile, Ken O’Keefe, the other panelist on the program, maintained that the United States invaded Afghanistan in order to achieve the goal of “full-spectrum dominance”, adding that it used the 9/11 false flag attacks in order to justify its plan.

The September, 11, 2001 attacks, also known as the 9/11 attacks, were a series of strikes in the US which killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.

US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists but many experts have raised questions about the official account.

The activist further stated the former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was never charged with the crime of 9/11 because there was no credible evidence linking him to the event.

However, he said, the United States managed to blame Afghanistan and al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks in order to carry out a war of aggression, knowing full well that Israel and Saudi Arabia were responsible for the incident.