Pentagon Leaders Austin, Milley to Face Capitol Hill Grilling on Afghanistan

Pentagon Leaders | Lawmakers will get their long-awaited chance Tuesday to grill Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley for the first time since the disastrous U.S. exit from Afghanistan, with key senators in both parties signaling that the two men will face a steady stream of tough questions.

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Pentagon Leaders Austin, Milley to Face Capitol Hill Grilling on Afghanistan

President Biden's leadership will also be under the gun, as lawmakers probe how the decision was made to exit Afghanistan, what the intelligence reports suggested and why the final days of the evacuation proved so costly, chaotic, and violent.

Having skirted congressional hearings on Afghanistan earlier this month, Mr. Austin and Gen. Milley will appear before the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, also will take questions from the panel in what is expected to be a lengthy, heated hearing that focuses heavily on the Biden administration's military missteps before and during the chaotic withdrawal and the limitations that now face the Pentagon as it crafts a counterterrorism strategy without the benefit of having assets on the ground in Afghanistan.

Those limitations came into focus after Gen. McKenzie admitted this month that an August “over-the-horizon” American drone strike in Kabul, initially believed to have targeted an Islamic State-affiliated terrorist, actually killed an Afghan working for an American aid organization and at least nine innocent people, including seven children.

Some Republican lawmakers have even broader questions and have zeroed in on what they believe was a disconnect between Pentagon leadership and top political officials in the Biden administration.

They wonder how Mr. Biden would have stuck by his original withdrawal plan despite mounting evidence that the U.S.-backed Afghan government was on the verge of a quick collapse and the Islamist Taliban were poised to rapidly overrun the country.

“Did the president really know and understand the ramifications of the withdrawal?” Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said during an appearance Monday on Fox News. “We want to know who knew what, when, and why were those decisions made.”

Military leaders are sure to be pressed on who made the call to turn over control of America's massive Bagram Air Base to the Afghan military nearly two full months before Mr. Biden's Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.

Critics argue that Bagram would have been an invaluable resource during the frantic airlift from the far smaller airport in Kabul, the site of a terrorist attack on Aug. 26 that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans.

There are also unanswered questions about why the Pentagon didn't have a better plan to quickly evacuate Americans and Afghan allies in the event of a quick Taliban takeover.

Gen. Milley and other top officials have said that virtually no one predicted the Afghan government would collapse in a matter of days, though many lawmakers have not been satisfied with that explanation.

Still, some analysts argue that Mr. Austin and Gen. Milley may escape with relatively little damage, given that the Senate is controlled by Democrats and some left-leaning mainstream media outlets have moved on from the Afghanistan debacle.

“Secretary Austin and Gen. Milley face tougher than usual circumstances for a Senate hearing considering recent events have been somewhat disastrous for the military, but I think they'll be just fine,” said former Pentagon spokesman J.D. Gordon.

“For one, they are only following directions from the White House, unlike what happened during the previous administration,” he said. “Two, there are arguably worse crises out there between coronavirus, an out-of-control border, and a $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending plan which would reshape America. Three, the left-wing media … will just bury bad news about the hearing, so half the country won't hear about it anyway.”

The hearing also will mark the first time Gen. Milley has appeared before Congress since revelations that he effectively went around President Trump during the final days of his administration to reassure China's communist leaders that the U.S. was not planning an attack.

The disclosures in a book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa also included a claim that Gen. Milley was so worried about Mr. Trump's mental state that he assembled top military leaders and advised them not to launch a nuclear strike — even if Mr. Trump directly ordered it — unless he was there.

Gen. Milley also had a conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, about Mr. Trump's mental state after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to the book.

The general has spoken little about those incidents but has promised to answer all lawmakers' questions.

“I think it's best that I reserve my comments on the record until I do that in front of the lawmakers who have the lawful responsibility to oversee the U.S. military,” he said this month. “I'll go into any level of detail Congress wants to go into.”

Some leading Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for Mr. Austin and Gen. Milley to resign over their handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Other prominent Republican figures have said that if Gen. Milley won't step down, the Biden administration should take action against him.

“The situation with Gen. Milley — they didn't create it, but they've got to address it,” Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, told Fox News last week. “You can't have the highest-ranking military official in this government bragging to a reporter about how they stepped in and superseded the authority of an elected commander in chief and actually undermined him by talking to a potential adversary.”

Gen. Milley's appearance before the Armed Services Committee likely won't be enough for some senators. Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this month that he might subpoena both officials to appear before his panel.

The Pentagon leaders skipped a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan on Sept. 13.

It won't be the only Capitol Hill gauntlet for the Defense Department's top civilian and military figures this week. Mr. Austin and Gen. Milley will testify Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee.

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Article Source: NewsEdge