At a Pentagon press conference on Monday, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell was asked “Will the Department of Defense commit to firing or otherwise discipling any remaining leadership that were directly involved in the Afghanistan withdrawal?”
[Following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and collapse of the Afghanistan government in August 2021, the Biden administration’s withdrawal plan received bipartisan domestic backlash.]
Parnell replied: “We’re in the process right now of what that investigation will look like” and then shared his personal insight as a veteran who served in Afghanistan “and watched that unfold.” He added, “I was horrified in a lot of ways,” and noted that for almost half of his life (he’s 43), “This country was at war in Afghanistan.”
Parnell said of his platoon: “We bled the ground red in Afghanistan…and to watch Afghanistan be surrendering the way it was was extremely difficult.”
He pivoted back to the current Trump administration and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth whom Parnell said “understand that when America gets involved in a fight, it’s our job to also end that fight as fast as humanly possible because we have a moral obligation to win and win decisively.”
Note: During the first Trump administration, a deal meant to bring the war in Afghanistan to an end was signed by the U.S. and the Taliban in February 2020. Critics of the deal claimed that Trump — who campaigned to bring “every US troop home” from the “US’s forever war” — appeased the Taliban and ignored the then-Afghan government in order to achieve a quick U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Amazing response Sean. You are absolutely correct! Accountability is coming. pic.twitter.com/vxHBvbcvjU
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 17, 2025
Parnell shared his opinions, uninterrupted for three minutes, and revealed “I lost 30 friends in my support of the Afghan war…what do we have to show for it? Not a whole lot.” He eventually answered the question about accountability, “We don’t know what it looks like right now but [we will] hold the leadership who was in charge of the Afghan withdrawal accountable.”
[NOTE: The blood Parnell references and the accountability was on and in the hands of four U.S. Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, who held office while the Afghanistan “forever war” raged; George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were all, in turn, Commander-in-Chief while American soldiers lost their lives in the war.]
Hegseth replied to Parnell’s speech on social media: “Amazing response Sean.” But not all Trump supporters agreed with Hegseth’s assessment.
One replied: “I am a 100% Trump supporter but that was the most lame non answer not ‘amazing’. Let’s not encourage these kind of answers. I would have liked to have heard just a short ‘yes’ we will be firing military leaders who played a role in this disgrace to our country.”
Another wrote: “The problem our ‘government’ has is, we can’t keep our nose out of other people’s business. Why is that? -Too much profit to be made causing chaos around the world.” Others voiced concern about the U.S.’s involvement in the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict.
On Saturday, Trump ordered military strikes in Yemen in the area controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia who claimed to have shot down a U.S. military MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Red Sea. As seen below on Fox News, Hegseth said: “Iran has been enabling the Houthis for far too long….they better back off.”
Iran has been enabling the Houthis for far too long….they better back off. pic.twitter.com/3NhVFKtvIK
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 16, 2025
The New York Times reported that “U.S. officials said that airstrikes against the Houthis’ arsenal, much of which is buried deep underground, could last for several weeks” and that “some national security aides want to pursue an even more aggressive campaign” but “Trump has not yet authorized that strategy.”
Note: In January, Trump froze federal funding for nonprofit organizations that are trying to help the thousands of Afghans who worked with U.S. troops and diplomats during the Afghan war, many of whom received State Department visas to resettle in the U.S. but reportedly don’t have the financial means to buy a plane ticket to resettle in the U.S.