November 15th. According to Fox News, on the 13th local time, US Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller conveyed his first message after taking office to the US military: “It’s time to go home.”
According to reports, Miller wrote in a memo sent to all employees of the Department of Defense, “Ending the war requires compromise and cooperation. We have done our best and it is time to go home.”
According to the report, Miller stated that although “the United States is still working hard to end the war launched by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001,” the United States “must avoid past strategic mistakes, that is, not carrying the war to the end”.
Miller added that, like many people, he was “tired of war” and stated that “we (the United States) are not a nation that is always at war. It runs counter to our position and everything that our ancestors fought for.”
On November 9, local time, U.S. President Trump announced that he would remove the Secretary of Defense Esper from his post and let Christopher Miller, director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, act as acting Secretary of Defense.
The United States launched the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and overthrew the Taliban regime that the United States identified as sheltering the “Al Qaeda” organization. According to statistics, since the Afghan War, more than 100,000 Afghan citizens and soldiers have died, and more than 2,400 US soldiers have died.
In February 2020, the United States and the Afghan Taliban signed a peace agreement in Qatar aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan. According to the agreement, the number of US troops in Afghanistan will drop to about 8,600 in June 2020, and the US and NATO coalition forces will withdraw from Afghanistan within 14 months.
The United States launched the Iraq War in 2003 and withdrew its troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, leaving only a small number of soldiers. In 2014, the “Islamic State” seized large areas of western and northern Iraq, and the United States subsequently increased its troops in Iraq, but the US military’s authority was limited to combating the “Islamic State” and providing support and training for the Iraqi government forces. Currently, there are about 5,200 American soldiers stationed in Iraq.
