Thread by @lrozen

🧵Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of Senate Armed Services Comm., noted to reporters on a call tonight that the committee held only one hearing on Afghanistan all last year, the year the Trump admin struck the deal with the Taliban to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan

By contrast, they have held 5 hearings on Afghanistan this year (since Ds took control of Senate). He noted a great deal of the hearing today was spent on whether we should have left Afghanistan at all. He thought that was a question we should have been asking a year ago

after the Doha agreement committed all US troops to leave by May 2021. The Armed Serv. comm has had 5 hearings on Afghanistan this year, & 1 last year, King said. Important context. The question of should we have left at all dominated the meeting this morning. But SASC wasn’t

asking last year, even when Trump was rapidly drawing down troops, and even in Jan. apparently said all US troops would be out of Afghanistan by Jan. 15. King said they were told that order was subsequently rescinded.

King also noted that in the closed session later this afternoon, the showboating and table pounding subsided, and it was very calm and informative.

He said the purpose of Milley’s reported Oct 2020 call with his Chinese counterpart was to calm China down; US had reporting that China thought there might be an “october surprise,” thought the US was acting provocatively, and concern was if China thought there

was danger of an imminent attack, China might launch a preemptive attack. miscalculation is how conflicts can start. He wanted to reassure them US had no intention to attack. Milley had another scheduled call w PRC counterpart Jan. 6, then Jan. 6 attack on US Capitol occurred.

Milley wanted to reassure them no plans for any attack, so that there was no need to prepare an attack of their own. King said he thought Milley handled the matter in a straightforward way, to head off what could have been a tragic miscalculation.