U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) on Thursday joined “Fox News Primetime” to discuss the need for the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) to hold military leadership accountable during its upcoming hearings concerning the crisis in Afghanistan.
Alabama’s freshman senator this week led his fellow GOP colleagues in calling on SASC chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) to summon senior military leaders before the committee to answer members’ questions relating to the turmoil which has engulfed the Middle Eastern country.
During the Fox News Channel interview, Tuberville echoed the concerns of his constituents and the need for the committee to press officials for substantive answers.
“Everywhere I go everybody is wanting to know ‘What the heck happened?’ ‘Who made these decisions?’ Was it a political decision made by the State Department or was it a military decision made by our generals? Everybody is asking that question and we can’t get a direct answer so I wrote a letter to Chairman Reed [a]nd asked that we have hearings and that will be next week,” said Tuberville.
“So, we will get some answers, hopefully, but this has been a debacle from day one,” he added. “We can’t get straight answers. The American people who pay the bills deserve answers.”
Tuberville continued, “We have got to [m]ake sure we ask the right questions. If you look at all the hearings or the questions that have been answered from the State Department and the military, they all have been just basic questions and answers, nobody has asked the hard questions. That’s what we will do.”
The senator further noted that military rank-and-file are not to blame for the crisis and stated the need for transparency concerning who was leading the withdrawal decision-making process.
“This is not the military’s fault. This is our leaders’ fault, whether it’s the State Department or a general, somebody is at fault and we need to find out who is behind all the problems that we had the last couple of weeks,” he concluded.
Tuberville of late has taken a critical posture toward some who hold senior leadership positions at the Pentagon.
During a recent Newsmax interview, Tuberville said the United States has “some generals that are TV generals and we’ve got some military generals.”
He further stated, “We want to find out who in the heck went along with this idea from the military side because if you went along with it, you’re part of the problem.”
Dylan Smith is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
