Former US Defense Secretary Calls for Pentagon to be Held Accountable for Afghanistan and Iraq Disasters
Jose Nino
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Former acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller declared that the United States must hold American military leadership accountable for its foreign policy misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Miller served as acting US secretary of defense from November 9, 2020 to January 20, 2021. He wrote a memoir titled “Soldier Secretary,” that was published in early February, where he argued that the US military-industrial complex has currently transformed into “hydra-headed monster” with “virtually no brakes on the American war machine.”
“The more I thought, the more I was horrified,” Miller said, per a report published by The Hill on February 9, 2023. “We invaded a sovereign nation, killed and maimed a lot of Iraqis, and lost some of the greatest American patriots to ever live — all for a goddamned lie.”
During the interview Miller had with The Hill, he said that the highest echelons of the Pentagon must be held accountable.
“That really bothers me. Our young soldiers see the hypocrisy in that … if they end up being late for work, they get in a lot of trouble. Or let’s say they mess up a piece of paperwork for a supply request, there’s a possibility they can be kicked out of the service,” he remarked.
“And then there’s the people who lose wars and end up advancing on to other positions of power and wealth,” Miller adds. “And that’s what really bugs me.”
“The recognition that so many sacrifices were ultimately made in the service of a lie, as in Iraq, or to further a delusion, as in the neoconservatives’ utopian fantasy of a democratic Middle East,” highlighted Miller.
“It still makes my blood boil, and it probably will until the day I die,” he continued.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars were geopolitical boondoggles of epic proportions. Both conflicts costed trillions and saw unnecessary numbers of American, Afghan, and Iraqi lives perish in the process.
These conflicts represented the worst aspects of the neoconservative’s fetish with trying to remake the world in America’s dysfunctional image. One can only hope that the public officials and intellectuals who co-signed these ventures be held accountable for prosecuting these conflicts. The likelihood of that occurring is very low, however — much to restrainers dismay.
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