Defense Department Austin admits US ‘fails to understand’ how quickly Afghanistan will fall into Taliban hands

Lloyd Austin said AfghanistanK fighters are to blame for disappearing when Taliban Saying that the Biden administration ‘failed to understand’ how quickly the Islamic terrorist group will take over the Afghan government and military.

The defense secretary said during a hearing, “The fact that the Afghan army that we and our allies trained, in many cases melted away without firing a shot, took us all by surprise – and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.” ” capital Hill on Tuesday.

‘Did we have the right strategy? Did we have too many strategies? Did we put too much faith in our ability to build effective Afghan institutions – an army, an air force, a police force and government ministries?’ Lloyd questioned in his opening statement.

He added: ‘We helped build a state, Mr President, but we couldn’t make a nation.’

Generals Mark Milley and Austin, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday in a hearing that focused on events surrounding the withdrawal of stranded troops from Afghanistan last month.

Austin said maintaining a presence in Afghanistan in September would do “a great deal of damage to our people and our mission” after Biden set an August 31 deadline.

“The Taliban have made it clear that their cooperation will end on September 1 – and as you know, we are facing serious and growing threats from ISIS-K,” Austin said on Tuesday.

He continued, ‘Longer stays than us would have made it more dangerous for our people and we would not have been able to make a significant difference in the number of people moving out.

Austin defended the decision of the Biden administration and to deal with the situation, blaming the Afghan military and former President Ashraf Ghani for their failures to prevent the Taliban from coming to power.

He then went on to say that Biden’s leaders at the Pentagon now needed to reflect on some uncomfortable truths related to his 20-year mission in Afghanistan.

“We didn’t fully understand the depth of corruption and poor leadership in the senior ranks,” Austin explained. ‘That we did not understand the damaging effect of President Ghani’s repeated and unexplained rotations of his commanders. We did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by deals made by the Taliban commander with local leaders in the wake of the Doha Agreement. And that the Doha Agreement itself had a demoralizing effect on the Afghan troops.’

Austin also said defense officials would lie if they said they weren’t ‘surprised’ that the Afghan army they helped build had ‘simply melted, in many cases without firing a shot’. Above: Taliban fighters patrol Kabul on Tuesday

“And in the end, we failed to understand that there was only so much for, and for what, many Afghan armies would fight,” he concluded.

Biden’s behavior regarding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans.

Last month, 13 US service members were killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing near the airport where evacuation flights were departing, amid chaos as people tried to evacuate from Kabul.

After the last contingent stepped off Afghan soil, reports began to pour in that hundreds of American citizens and their families – and potentially thousands of Afghan allies – were left behind.

US officials say they still know of about 100 US citizens and legal permanent residents stranded in Afghanistan and ready to be evacuated about a month after their return.

A senior State Department official told reporters that efforts were on to rescue him.

Veterans-led groups leading private rescue efforts for Americans and Afghan allies question State Department figures, claiming they believe more than 100 US citizens are left behind – 400- more than 500.