Trump Team Weighs Courts-Martial For Officers Who Oversaw Afghanistan Withdrawal
17th November 2024
Donald Trump’s transition team is making a list of senior military officers who oversaw the disastrous 2021 withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and considering the possibility of court-martialing them for their failings, according to two sources cited by NBC News.
“They’re taking it very seriously,” said a source who claims to have knowledge of the initiative. The most notorious incident of the chaotic withdrawal was the Aug. 26, 2021 suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, just outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Thirteen US service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians were killed. In the following days, a US airstrike intended to kill the leader of the Islamic State instead killed 10 innocents. The rapid collapse of the US-sponsored Afghanistan government allowed enormous quantities of US weapons to fall into the hands of the Taliban.