Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon is conducting “a complete review” of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan ended in August 2021, 20 years after the war began in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, though the chaotic nature of the final weeks has been the subject of significant scrutiny.
“We’re doing a complete review of every single aspect of what happened with the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan and plan to have full accountability,” Hegseth said ahead of the president’s first complete Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “We’re taking a very different view, obviously, than the previous administration, and there will be full accountability.”
He did not specify who was leading the review, the parameters they were dealing with, or if the investigators had a deadline for when to get a report to him.
The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General has not been asked to participate in this review, a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. Steven Stebbins is currently serving as the acting inspector general after Trump fired Robert Storch when he fired more than a dozen inspectors general last month.
The first Trump administration agreed to a deal in 2020 with the Taliban, without the Afghan government, to end the military’s presence the following year if certain conditions were met, though it was the Biden administration that followed through with the plan to leave.
The Taliban conducted a revolt in July and August 2021 against the U.S.-based Afghan Army, which quickly folded. As a result, the Biden administration announced it would conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation to get Americans or Afghan allies that would be at risk under the Taliban out of the country.
It was the largest such operation ever conducted. They got over 100,000 out of the country, though they left an untold number of Afghan allies behind. As the flights were ongoing, an ISIS-K suicide bomber carried out an attack at the perimeter of the airport, killing nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
“That was a horrible display, and I’ve dealt with the parents and family of the 13 that were killed, but no one ever talks about the 40 that were so badly hurt with the arms and the legs and the face and the whole thing. The missing arms and legs. It was so terrible,” Trump said.
He also jokingly said he doesn’t believe many of the military leaders involved in the withdrawal would get promotions, adding, “I think they’ll largely be gone,” though many of the senior military leaders are no longer in those roles.
It’s not the first time Hegseth has promised “accountability for what occurred in Afghanistan,” which he did during his town hall with Pentagon employees earlier this month.
Trump and Hegseth are working on reshaping the Department of Defense. The department has announced plans to lay off more than 5,000 probationary employees and to identify and divert about $50 billion worth of Biden legacy programs to reallocate for purposes more aligned with its agenda. They have ended the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
The president fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last Friday and said he would nominate Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine as a replacement. Shortly after, the secretary fired Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife, and the top lawyers at three of the service branches.
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Trump will need to waive the legal requirements to serve as chairman for Caine’s nomination. Any nominee to be chairman must have previously served as the vice chair, led one of the military services, or served as a combatant commander, which he has not done.
“Certainly Gen. ‘Razin’ Caine, who is on his way in, was not a part of [the Afghan withdrawal],” Hegseth said. “Instead, [he] was a part of leading the effort against ISIS by untying the hands of warfighters and finishing the job properly.”
