Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell Provides Update On Panel Investigating Afghanistan Withdrawal

At a Pentagon press briefing on Wednesday, Spokesperson Sean Parnell was asked about the investigation into the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Transcript

00:00Did you also provide an update on the review panel on Afghanistan and what work has been done there

00:05thus far? Yeah, we've got a great team coming together, most of whom will be here in July.

00:10And Haley, I think, you know, that's a great question. I just want to say, you know, our

00:15strategic outset here for this, for this review, you know, you think back to the Vietnam War

00:20and helicopters on embassies, and I got to believe that there were a lot of first lieutenants,

00:26captains, majors who witnessed that, who fought in that war and thought, boy, I wish we could have

00:31ended this war differently. And some of those first lieutenants, captains, majors, I'm sure stayed in

00:36and became one star, two star, three star generals, and then maybe led and commanded an Operation Desert

00:42Storm. And I find that interesting because in Operation Desert Storm, there's a clear mission,

00:47clear end state, American troops withdrawn when that end state was realized. And I feel like many of

00:54those one star, two star, three star generals perhaps retired after a desert storm. And a lot

00:57of that institutional knowledge and that pain that was experienced during the withdrawal in Vietnam

01:01was probably lost. And then flash forward 10 years, 9-11 happens, 20 years of war in Iraq and

01:07Afghanistan. And we find ourselves at the end of the Afghan war in a remarkably similar situation that

01:13we were in Vietnam. So the question that I have here that the department has is what happened?

01:20Like, how do we as a department make sure that something like in Vietnam and something there

01:26again that happened in Afghanistan never happens again? Helicopters and embassies in Vietnam,

01:31helicopters and embassies in Afghanistan, it's just not the desired end state that we were looking

01:37for in those conflicts. And so how do we get an assessment at the tactical, strategic, and maybe

01:44presidential level of questions that were how was intel reported during the withdrawal? You know,

01:49how do we structure our report in the micro at the tactical level to answer a lot of the questions

01:54that the American people had? The questions like, why did we abandon Bagram? How did we end up in

01:59Kandahar? All of these questions are the types of questions that we're going to be that we're going

02:04to be asking. But ultimately, it's ultimately, it's, it's about weaving these lessons learned into

02:10doctrine. And the idea that like, maybe we can use this review to reform the way that we evaluate and

02:19promote young non commission officers and young officers. Like, for example, if you read the Afghan

02:24reports that came out every June, regardless of who the task force commander was in Afghanistan,

02:28those reviews were remarkably similar. But the end state was a disaster. So I think if you think back

02:36to my time in Afghanistan as a young commander giving battlefield update briefs as a captain to

02:40my battalion commander, if I were constantly saying that my area of operations was a disaster,

02:46it didn't have the ammo or troops that I needed to accomplish the mission, the likelihood of me

02:49getting promoted was probably not great. So how do we set the conditions here in the department

02:55to create a sense of honesty where officers are reporting what they believe to be accuracy? They're

03:00concerned about maybe their area of operations. They're concerned about the truth and maybe less about

03:05their careers. And that's not an indictment on the officers and the DOD. It's just the way that

03:10our system is is constructed. And so we've got a great team that we put together. There are many of

03:16whom will start in July where the real workers started. Just had a great meeting with with the

03:22chairman of the joint chiefs about this and how the joint staff can help collaborate on this. But

03:26I'm very optimistic about about where we're going with this review, Haley.

03:31Have you started interviews for this report? Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've we've done we've

03:37done interviews. We've had we've had meetings. I mean, we've we're getting a lot done. I mean,

03:42I feel really good about it.