Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that he had directed his chief spokesman to convene a panel to review the U.S. military’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and to ensure that senior military officials were held accountable.
In a memo to senior Pentagon leaders, Mr. Hegseth said that the department had been reviewing the operation that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and 170 civilians at Kabul International Airport. He suggested that the effort led by Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, would be more comprehensive than previous reviews.
Mr. Hegseth’s selection of his chief spokesman to conduct such an inquiry was highly unusual and appeared to reflect a skepticism that uniformed military leaders would hold each other accountable.
Mr. Parnell served in Afghanistan for 16 months in 2006 and 2007 as a platoon leader in Paktika Province, near Pakistan’s border, where he was wounded in combat. A news release announcing the review noted that he “lost countless friends to the war on terror.”
He will be joined in the review by former Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, who in October 2021 pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty, contempt toward officials and willfully disobeying a superior officer, after he excoriated senior military officials in the days after a suicide bombing killed the 13 U.S. troops at Kabul’s airport.
“I want to say this very strongly,” Colonel Scheller said in his video he recorded only hours after the deaths. “I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders: I demand accountability.”
He was reprimanded by a military judge and ordered to forfeit $5,000 in pay.
In his video, Colonel Scheller criticized the military’s senior leaders for closing Bagram Air Base, a large, secure facility about 25 miles from Kabul, and for relying entirely on a more vulnerable, civilian airport for the high-stakes evacuation.
“Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram airfield’?” he asked.
Mr. Hegseth largely blamed the Biden administration for the poorly executed end to the war, and seemed to suggest, much as Colonel Scheller did in his video, that uniformed military leaders should have resigned in protest rather than carry out the flawed withdrawal plan.
“This team will ensure ACCOUNTABILITY to the American people and the warfighters of our great Nation,” Mr. Hegseth wrote in announcing the effort.
But the review’s narrow scope likely will not include the decisions that led up to the withdrawal, such as the deal President Trump and his first administration made with the Taliban in February 2020. That agreement set a hard deadline for America’s retreat from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war.
Nor does it seem likely that the review will look into the sudden collapse of the Afghan military after tens of billions of dollars in support from the Pentagon. Civilian and military leaders spanning four presidencies touted the growing strength and progress of the Afghan forces only to see them collapse in a matter of weeks as the U.S. military was leaving.
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