Politico: Afghan collapse was much faster than expected, Austin says
He said President Biden had “no good options.”
U.S. assessments placed a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan at several months to two years after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, adding that nobody had predicted "the government would fall in 11 days."
"It was a wide range of of assessments, and as the Taliban began to make gains, and then we saw that in a number of cases, there was less fighting and more surrendering and more forces just kind of evaporating.
It was very difficult to predict with accuracy," Austin said in an interview with ABC‘s Martha Raddatz on “This Week” that aired Sunday.
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Update #1: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin seeks ‘creative’ ways to get Americans out of Kabul (AP) Update #2: ‘No good options’ in Afghan withdrawal plan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says (NYPost)
WNU Editor: It is never reassuring to see the top official in the U.S. military admit that they completely failed in understanding what was happening on the ground in Afghanistan, and that all their assessments were wrong.
You now have to wonder what other assessments are wrong.
Will China invade Taiwan?
Will Iran continue to move forward to develop and build nuclear weapons?
Will jihadist movements grow and continue to spread in Africa?
To say that events of the past few weeks now puts into question everything that the U.S. does on the international scene is an understatement.
The only thing that I now want to know is who oversaw all of these assessments on Afghanistan. My guess is taht it is National security adviser Jake Sullivan.
