Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, said that the US is not planning on giving the Afghan military air support after the withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete.
McKenzie’s comments appear to refute a report from The New York Times that said the Pentagon was considering authorizing airstrikes against the Taliban in support of the Afghan government after the pullout.
While McKenzie said the US is not planning to support Afghan forces with airstrikes, he left open the possibility of bombing Afghanistan if it can be framed as a “counterterrorism” operation.
“That would be the reason for any strikes that we do in Afghanistan after we leave, [it] would have to be that we’ve uncovered someone who wants to attack the homeland of the United States, one of our allies and partners,” he told Voice of America in an interview published on Monday.
US officials are working out plans to maintain the ability to bomb and fly surveillance missions over Afghanistan, what the Pentagon has dubbed “over the horizon capability.” The Pentagon had been hoping to reposition forces in neighboring countries, but it doesn’t appear that any progress has been made towards that end.
The US will have to settle for flying Afghanistan missions out of its bases in the Gulf region or from aircraft carriers. Last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the US had already begun launching Afghanistan operations from outside the country.
CENTCOM said last week that the withdrawal is over 50 percent complete, although the command is not disclosing troop numbers. Questions remain over what the US’s diplomatic presence will look like and how many troops Washington will try to leave behind to protect its embassy.
Of course we’ll give Afghan forces air support.
We will just lie about it, even more than we do now.
Close air support will come from “Afghan” aircraft paid for, supplied, and maintained by the West with foreign contractors. Perhaps some but not all pilots will be Afghans, if only for the language skills on the air/ground radio.
It will also come from armed drones, as it has for a long time now, without any meaningful changes. Maybe they will even be “Afghan” drones flying from their bases, but controlled from US control centers as now, and supplied, paid for, and maintained by foreign contractors.
It will also include the same long range “anti-terror strikes” that the US originally used, guided by secretive CIA teams, in the initial invasion of Afghanistan. The few guys riding camels with radios provided crushing air support that turned the tide in favor of the Northern Alliance. They won’t now for the Kabul puppets they train and pay? Who believes that?
“We will just lie about it, even more than we do now.”
He even told us what those lies will be.
McKenzie: “That would be the reason for any strikes that we do in Afghanistan after we leave, [it] would have to be that we’ve uncovered someone who wants to attack the homeland of the United States, one of our allies and partners”
Pretty good odds that will be our standard evidence-free answer.