As Lt. Gen. Scott Miller faced tough questions Tuesday from Senate Democrats weighing his nomination as the new U.S. commander in the 17-year-old Afghanistan war, he pointed to his uniformed son sitting behind him.
“I acknowledge the 17 years. That’s generational,” said Miller, whose family attended his Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing. “This young guy sitting behind me, I never anticipated that his cohort would be in a position to deploy as I sat there in 2001.”
Miller, who heads U.S. Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., is poised to be promoted and take over the NATO-led Resolute Support mission from Gen. John Nicholson. He would be the ninth general in that role.
If confirmed by the committee, Miller would take the lead in carrying out President Trump’s strategy in the war-torn country, which includes thousands more troops to assist Afghan forces and increased intensity to force the Taliban into peace accords.
“You come from what is now a very long line of military leaders, who acknowledged the real challenges but ultimately were faithful to the idea that our strategy was working. Unfortunately, you are not the first commander to come in here to express cautious optimism,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said.
Top military leaders and Afghanistan commanders have been declaring turning points in the war since at least 2010, most recently when Nicholson declared U.S. and Afghan forces “turned a corner” last year, Warren said.
“We supposedly turned the corner so many times now we are going in circles. Let me just ask you, do you envision turning another corner during your tenure as commander?. After 17 years of war, what are you going to do differently to bring this conflict to an end?” she asked.
Miller, who was wounded in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 as a young infantry officer, maintained throughout his testimony that the U.S. was blocking further attacks in Afghanistan, where the Taliban shielded Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after 9/11.
“I can’t guarantee you a timeline — I know that going into this position — or offer necessarily a turning point unless there’s something to come back and report back that something has changed,” he said. “I go back to the vital national interest of the United States of America. I do know today … because there are forces there that is having an effect on elements that would attack the United States of America, it is disruptive.”
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, noted that the U.S. had been on the brink of withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year, before Trump reluctantly approved the strategy put forward by the Pentagon. She asked Miller to explain what the effects of a withdrawal would have been.
He said a “precipitous and disorderly withdraw” would have hampered the U.S. from protecting against an attack from the country.
“So you do agree, sir, that at some point we do need to find our way out of Afghanistan, but it needs to be done in a methodical order?” Ernst asked in a follow-up question.
“That is correct, senator,” he said.
