provocation that chinese may act on. yes, as donald rumsfeld said, weakness is provocative. the fall of afghanistan, we enforced in their minds the notion that the u.s. first of all is just feeble. but also incompetent. leave morgue than what 83 billion dollars worth of equipment and 400 americans maybe more. leaving our afghan allies there. leaving and not doing very much about our british and other nato allies. china looks at that, says that, well, the united states is finished. gordon chang we have frozen our defense budget. and communist china are goingful bore ahead with nuclear missiles and
provocation that chinese may act on. yes, as donald rumsfeld said, weakness is provocative. the fall of afghanistan, we enforced in their minds the notion that the u.s. first of all is just feeble. but also incompetent. leave morgue than what 83 billion dollars worth of equipment and 400 americans maybe more. leaving our afghan allies there. leaving and not doing very much about our british and other nato allies. china looks at that, says that, well, the united states is finished. gordon chang we have frozen our defense budget. and communist china are goingful bore ahead with nuclear missiles and
and are likely says the us lost the war in afghanistan after the chaotic withdrawal. over 20 years i don t think when you get phenomena like a war that was lost and it has been in the sense of we accomplished our strategic task of protecting america against al qaeda but the end state is different than we wanted. former department of defense advisor under donald trump, he was congressional candidate in florida corey mills, great to see you. as a veteran what is your reaction to that admission of defeat? trying to act as if we achieved our strategic goal, or strategic goal was to stop afghanistan from being a safe haven of terrorism and what we achieved is to have the most well-equipped and armed terrorist group in the world. we left $83 billion in
milley, general milley. over the course of the 20 years in afghanistan, the united states special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction estimates that the united states spent $83 billion equipping and training the afghanistan national defense and security forces which included almost $10 billion in aircraft and vehicles. we all saw the unexpected and appalling rate how quickly the afghan military folded under pressure from the taliban. what u.s. train and equipment efforts to afghanistan suggest about security cooperation, operations going forward, and what aspects about training and equip efforts do you think the department should reassess? turn it over to joe milley quickly. i think we should reassess everything soup to nuts. we put a valiant effort into
0 of its troops, contractors and non-diplomatic personnel from afghanistan no later than may 1st, 2021. in june 2020 the u.s. troop levels reached 8600. in october president former president trump tweeted we should have a small number of remaining brave men and women serving in afghanistan home by christmas. in november 17, 2020 then acting secretary of defense miller announced we ll implement former president trump east order to continuing repositioning forces from afghanistan. and the 2500 u.s. troops who remain there by january 15th. on january 15th he announced there were 2500 troops left. on january 20th biden became president. 2500 troops were then in afghanistan. on april 14th president biden announced his intention to continue the withdrawal all regular u.s. troops by september 11th. four months after the pre-planned may 1st deadline. on july 2nd italy and germany withdrew their troops on july 17th we have had specific testimony here on what then happened from july 17th on. a