Photo taken on Jan. 23, 2018 shows a Black Hawk helicopter during a handover ceremony between the U.S. forces and the Afghan air force in Kandahar Province, south Afghanistan. |

At a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing held in the day, Senator Chris Coons said that 16 or 17 years in, he is not convinced that they have a strategy to win.

"I don't think there is a clear path out of Afghanistan and I worry that the Taliban will simply wait us out regardless of how long we are there, and as a result we may be there the rest of my life," said the Democratic lawmaker from Delaware.

At the hearing, Bob Corker, Republican chairman of the committee, asked how the United States could "get to a place where Afghanistan is able to function without significant support from the West and other countries."

John Sullivan, deputy secretary of state, and Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, defended the Trump administration's strategy at the hearing, saying that it was situation-oriented rather than setting a fixed timetable.

During the hearing, neither Sullivan nor Schriver gave a specific number of the cost for the implementation of the strategy, only estimating that the U.S. involvement will cost more than 45 billion U.S. dollars this year.

Tens of billions have been "thrown down a hatch in Afghanistan," said Republican Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky. 
"We're in an impossible situation," he added.

Trump unveiled his new Afghanistan strategy in a national address in late August, in which he called a rapid exit of the U.S. troops from Afghanistan "unacceptable."

The main change Trump made included taking restrictions off U.S. forces, which critics said hindered U.S. commanders in the field.

Currently, there are some 15,000 U.S. troops who are reportedly being deployed in the war-torn country under Trump's plan.