The U.S. Army's Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Millie, testified Tuesday before a Senate panel on the conduct of the command echelon during the dark withdrawal from Afghanistan and detailed his disagreements with former President Donald Trump over tensions with China in the final days of his tenure.
General Millie said the fall of the Afghan army followed by the capital Kabul and eventually local government were an "intelligence miss" and admitted that estimates failed to predict the collapse that occurred last August.
"We did not have a full intelligence assessment of the leadership's morale and will," he said.
"The vast majority of the Afghan army put down its weapons and melted down."
He also noted that the agreement signed by the Trump administration in Doha with the Taliban in February 2020 “had a negative impact on the performance of Afghan forces.
Taliban in Kabul after the fall of the city,
At the same time, General Millie referred to an affair revealed in the latest book by Bob Woodward (78) and Robert Costa (35), a Washington Post journalist who described contacts that took place between the U.S. military commander and his Chinese counterpart, General Lee Suochang, in the last days of the Trump administration In an attempt to prevent a clash between the two powers.
"I know and believe that President Trump did not intend to attack China and it was my direct responsibility to follow the president's orders and intentions," Millie noted, adding: "My mission at the time was to escalate. My message was consistent: stay calm, stable. We are not. We are going to attack you, "he stressed when asked about the suspicions that he did not fulfill the wishes of the former US president.
Millie detailed that there were two talks with the commander of the Chinese People's Army on October 30, 2020 and January this year and reiterated that the very existence of the contacts and their approval went through the US Department of Defense.
As mentioned, a number of conservative lawmakers claim that this was an abuse of authority and even called on President Joe Biden to fire the chief of staff.