Military leaders testify ‘strategic failure’ followed years of mistakes in Afghanistan

The nation’s top general testified Tuesday that the American war in Afghanistan ended in “strategic failure,” a grim conclusion that acknowledged a long series of mistakes and miscalculations by the Pentagon’s leaders. “There’s no other way to describe that.” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who oversaw the most recent operations in Afghanistan, also testified at the hearing, which peeled back layer after layer of U.S. errors in judgment during the longest war in American history. McKenzie also said it was his belief that pulling out all U.S. troops “would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.” It was an unusually public airing of divisions between the president and military leaders — one that will probably reverberate throughout Washington as Biden continues to face political fallout over the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. “He did not think it was in the interests of the American people or the interests of our troops.” During Tuesday’s hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed said lawmakers should resist the “temptation to close the book on Afghanistan and simply move on.” “We must capture the lessons of the last two decades to ensure that our future counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere continue to hold violent extremists at bay,” he said. Pelosi expressed concerns that Trump was unstable, and she worried about his control of the country’s nuclear weapons, according to “Peril.” The general told lawmakers that as a military advisor, he’s not in the “chain of command” for a nuclear strike, but he is in the “chain of communication.” During his conversation with Pelosi, Milley testified, he said that “the president is the sole nuclear launch authority, and he doesn’t launch them alone, and I am not qualified to determine the mental health of the president of the United States.”