Former President Donald Trump’s last Pentagon chief, Christopher Miller, believes no one in the military has been held accountable for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
.
Miller, who served multiple deployments in both wars, writes in his new book,
Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies
, which was released on Tuesday, that Trump’s only guidance from him when he took the position in November 2020 was to “bring the troops home.”
While the Trump administration agreed to a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw troops within 14 months, prior to Miller’s time as acting secretary of defense, it was President
Joe Biden who ultimately led the chaotic exit in August 2021.
‘YOU’RE FIRED! YOU’RE HIRED!’: TRUMP’S FINAL ACTING PENTAGON CHIEF RECOUNTS HOW HE GOT THE JOB
“We lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and no one’s been held accountable,” he told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “And that to me, I was raised in my ethos coming up as a young officer was that, you know, you’re responsible for everything that does or doesn’t happen, and to see the decisions that were made over the years that resulted in our defeat in Afghanistan, and no one’s been held responsible.”
The other aspect that Miller wanted to see from current defense officials was “lessons learned,” though he said he doesn’t see that happening right now.
“We have doggone generals that talked with great confidence and how they could achieve our goals in Afghanistan only to fail horribly,” he added. “Nope, they’re not held accountable. They’d go sit on these boards and think tanks and get paid enormous sums of money. And I think that’s really, really damaging to the ethos of the officer corps.”
In the book, he listed ten action items that promote “a new way forward for America,” and the final one is to “fire the generals.”
“Accountability for the most senior general officers — the ones that develop strategy and provide guidance and advance to their civilian bosses — is woefully lacking in the current culture,” the former acting Pentagon chief writes. “It seems obtuse that an administrative error is more harshly punished than losing a war, which brings national shame and embarrassment, not to mention the profound waste of our human and financial treasure.”
Multiple House committees, now under Republican control, have been eager to investigate the way the end of the war in Afghanistan occurred.
The final U.S. forces in Afghanistan evacuated more than 120,000 civilians in the final two weeks of August, after the Taliban took control, though their efforts were marred by the tragic events of Aug. 26 and 29. On Aug. 26, an ISIS-K operative detonated a suicide vest, killing 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 civilians outside the gates of the airport where the evacuations were occurring, while on Aug. 29, U.S. forces launched a strike at what they believed to be another imminent threat to the personnel at the airport, but the target was wrongly identified and 10 civilians were killed, including multiple children.
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Miller, throughout the book, discusses major shifts he’d like to see in how the Department of Defense operates, ranging from deep cuts in its budget to creating a smaller force, demolishing and then rebuilding the intelligence community, and restoring universal service for 18-year-olds requiring them to serve for 18 months whether that’s in military service, healthcare, education, infrastructure rejuvenation, environmental programs, or the National Park Service.
“We need to restructure and rethink how we do our national security,” the former acting secretary said. “We’re going from an era of exquisite platinum-plated weapon systems, very few of them, which lets you know, for pride or … it won the Cold War, it was the right approach, the Soviets couldn’t keep up and we bankrupted them. Well, we’re returning to an era where it’s quantity over quality, and we still have not made that adjustment in our military.”
