Pentagon chief acknowledges US wrongdoing in Afghanistan

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chief of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Millie testified before the Senate on Tuesday in the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.
During his testimony before the senators, the Pentagon chief questioned whether the United States had adopted the right strategy and approach in Afghanistan and whether it had a misconception about building a strong government and army in Afghanistan that would last a long time. .
“We need to pay attention to some of the bitter truths,” he said. We did not, we ignored the destructive effect of repeated and unwarranted turns of Afghan military commanders by President Ashraf Ghani.
Lloyd Austin added that we did not pay attention to the chain of contracts that Taliban commanders entered into following the Doha agreement with local leaders. The Doha Agreement itself had a negative impact on Afghan troops.
The head of the Pentagon admitted that in the end we could not understand the will of the Afghan soldiers to fight. We helped create a government but we could not form a nation.
Speaking in the Senate in defense of the planning and planning of the Biden government’s hasty exit from Afghanistan, which marked a deadly end to the country, the Biden administration official claimed that we wanted to be ready and we were ready.
“The Pentagon has been planning since the spring and is considering the possibility of civilians leaving Afghanistan,” he said, noting that the fall of the Afghan army to the Taliban took us by surprise.
“We looked at different scenarios,” he said. With the arrival of June, US forces were deployed in the area.
Acknowledging that although the first two days of the evacuation operation were difficult, he claimed that US forces were able to restore order within 48 hours and that a very difficult effort to evacuate thousands of American and Afghan citizens in danger began quickly.
“We watched with concern the images of Afghans attacking the runway and the US aircraft,” he said. We all remember scenes of confusion outside Kabul Airport.
“We are still trying to evacuate Americans who want to leave Afghanistan,” he said.
The Pentagon chief added: “We had planned to evacuate 70,000 to 80,000 people, but they evacuated 120,000.” We also planned to move an average of 5,000 to 9,000 people a day, but they moved 7,000 a day.
He added that more than 387 American planes left the region, which means an average of 23 flights a day. At the height of the operation, one plane departed from Kabul airport every 45 minutes.
Stating that this was the largest evacuation operation in US history, the Secretary of Defense added that during the longest US war, 2,461 Americans lost their lives and more than 20,000 others were injured, some of them These injuries are internal and not visible.
The head of the Pentagon also said that maintaining the Bagram air base in Afghanistan required that the maintenance of that base require 5,000 American troops to defend it and that their lives be endangered while not assisting the assigned mission.
According to IRNA, Pentagon officials attended the congress to answer the intense questions of the Senate Armed Services Committee about the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was the longest war in US history, beginning in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.
Pentagon officials will also appear before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
Tomorrow, Gen. Frank Mackenzie, Chief of Staff at Centcom, will answer senators’ questions about Afghanistan.
To end the country’s longest war, US President Joe Biden marked 17 dark and daunting days for the Americans and the world, and a deadly and painful end for the Afghan people to bring to an end the failed “nation-building” project. Announce America.
The United States has lost nearly 2,500 troops in its longest war, but what has posed a major challenge to the Biden administration is the killing of 13 young American soldiers in an ISIL suicide attack outside Kabul airport, many of whom They were babies during the 9/11 attacks.
In his first speech since withdrawing his troops from Afghanistan, Biden acknowledged that the war had cost the United States $ 300 million a day for two decades, and that Washington had two options: withdraw or escalate the military conflict.
He also acknowledged that soldiers with disabilities commit suicide daily in the United States.