Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee were loaded up to score points on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, as they heard testimony today from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and commander of the US Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie. The Republicans’ central concern was to elicit testimony that they had warned President Biden that he had to leave 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and that he had lied in saying that he’d never gotten such advice. Biden had told George Stephanopoulos in August that he did not recall being told that.
Austin first testified that they had evacuated more than 120,000 people in two and a half weeks; but that had had to consider some “uncomfortable truths… We helped build a state, Mr. Chairman, but we could not forge a nation. 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.” A good beginning, but perhaps Austin, and others, would be intellectually and morally honest enough to now question their overlooked axioms, responsible for their surprise — such as the lack of economic development, leaving most Afghanis suspicious of the West. Then, there is the history of British Imperialism in Afghanistan, which the United States’ occupation of Afghanistan imitated in form, and sometimes in content.
