Jennifer Upton
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, appearing before Congress on Tuesday, acknowledged a series of failures that led to the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
“It is clear and obvious that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted with the Taliban now in power in Kabul,” General Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee, warning that Afghanistan today appears headed towards civil war.
“We need to consider some uncomfortable truths that we didn’t fully comprehend,” Secretary Austin told senators.
“The fact that the Afghan army that we and our partners trained, simply melted away – in many cases without firing a shot – took us all by surprise and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise,” Austin said.
The comments of top US military officials, including General Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command who oversaw the withdrawal were the most extensive public comments from Pentagon leaders since the August 30 withdrawal.
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