President Obama on Thursday said the U.S. is "on track to acheive our goals" in Afghanistan, citing the military's assessment of the Afghanistan war effort, which states that the administration can keep its pledge to begin withdrawing troops from the region starting July 2011. The transition of power to Afghanistan’s government should take place as scheduled by 2014, the report says.

(U.S. Army)

The administration commissioned the report one year ago to assess the progress made in the nine-year war. The war has cost the U.S. $336 billion so far. 2,264 coalition soldiers have died in the war, according to icasualties.org.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the progress in the war had "exceeded my expectations."

Obama commissioned the report after he pledged to send an additional 30,000 troops to the region. The report cites the troop “surge” as a success.

“The surge in coalition military and civilian resources, along with an expanded special operations forces targeting campaign and expanded local security measures at the village level, has reduced overall Taliban influence and arrested the momentum they had achieved in recent years in key parts of the country,” the report summary states.

The report comes across as optimistic for the future of the U.S. in the region, citing strides made in Kandahar and the Hemland provinces. However, the report summary remains cautious about these successes.

“While the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, these gains remain fragile and reversible,” the summary states. “Consolidating those gains will require that we make more progress with Pakistan to eliminate sanctuaries for violent extremist networks.”

The report comes at a time when public opinion of the Afghanistan conflict is souring. An ABC-Washington Post poll shows that six out of ten Americans say that the war has been “not worth fighting.”

In the face of the military’s positive overall outlook on the war, recent reports from the U.S. intelligence community argued that, in fact, the war effort has little chance of success unless Pakistan begins to target insurgents on its own borders.

The military’s report, however, holds that Pakistan relations "are headed in the right direction, both in terms of US focus and Pakistani cooperation."

A group of 23 experts on Afghanistan signed an open letter to President Obama this week that said the scheduled deadline of 2014 for the transfer of power to the Afghan government is not realistic.

“The situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country,” the letter reads. “It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road.”

A co-signer of the letter, former Middle East diplomat Gerard Russell, told Neon Tommy that the academic community is skeptical about the reports of military success. Furthermore, he said, military success by the U.S. and NATO cannot guarantee stability in Afghanistan.

“Regardless of military success, what you’re seeking to achieve is a change in the mentality of the people,” he said. “And military success does not guarantee that by any means, especially when that military success is achieved by an army – the American army or the British army – which is not going to stay in Afghanistan, and which is a foreign army.”