"The fact that the Afghan soldiers we and our partners train just melt away -- in most cases without firing a shot -- surprises us all," Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, September 28, 2021.
U.S. President Joe Biden signs an executive order for transgender people to serve in the military while meeting with the new U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
"It would be dishonest to claim otherwise."
Austin told Congress about the chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of US troops and civilians and brought the Taliban back to power.
The Senate and House committees that oversee the US military hold hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, during which Republicans are expected to take aim at what they see as mistakes by President Joe Biden's administration towards the end of the two-decade war.
It builds on a similar question two weeks ago against US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has staunchly defended the government, even as he faced calls for his resignation.
Austin praised American personnel who helped transport 124,000 Afghans overseas, an operation that also killed 13 US troops and scores of Afghans in a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport.
"Is it perfect? Of course not," Austin said, alluding to Afghans who died trying to climb the sides of US military planes or civilians who died in the last US drone strike in the war.
Senator James Inhofe, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has publicly blamed the Biden administration for what critics say is the humiliating end to a 20-year effort.
Inhofe said Biden ignored the recommendations of his military leaders and left many Americans behind after the US withdrawal.
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"We have all witnessed the horrors created by the president," Inhofe said of Afghanistan.
Many of the toughest questions may fall to the two senior United States military commanders, Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine General Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command.