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Pentagon officials have held several high-level meetings in recent months in preparation for a flurry of Republican-led House investigations into issues ranging from the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to what conservative lawmakers deemed “woke” military policies according to a senior defense official.

House Republicans have long signaled their intention to launch a series of inquiries if and when they get a majority. Some of these priorities were signaled by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee in November of last year, when they released a 1,000-page report on what they called the politicization of the Justice Department and the FBI, complete with dozens of letters sent to various government officials – current and former – detailing inquiries about various DOJ and FBI investigations.

After finally winning a protracted battle to be named Speaker of the House in the early hours of Saturday, Rep. Kevin McCarthy suggested the Pentagon would be scrutinized.

“We will hold the swamp, from the withdrawal of Afghanistan, to the origins of covid and arming the FBI, accountable,” McCarthy said.

Pentagon leaders are well aware that the investigation could begin immediately after the House members are sworn in.

When asked Thursday about potential probes, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the Department of Defense “respects Congress’ important oversight role and will, as always, continue to work closely with Congress and respond manner appropriate to the lawful requests of Congress”.

The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a top investigative focus for Republicans since its chaotic conclusion in August 2021, underlined by the killing of 13 US military personnel at Kabul International Airport in the closing days of the America’s longest war.

A number of key decisions, including the early closure of Bagram Air Base, a perceived lack of security at Hamid Karzai International Airport, the evacuation of the US Embassy in Kabul, relations with the Taliban, are likely to be examined in an investigation that reaches beyond the Defense Department to the State Department and the White House.

Texas Republican Representative Michael McCaul, who is expected to take over as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN on Thursday that the Republican majority “will continue to demand answers about why the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a such a disaster”.

“The American people deserve transparency from this administration,” McCaul said, “especially when it comes to national security, and we will work to provide it to them.”

Led by McCaul, the Republicans on the committee prepared their own probe into the withdrawal, released a year after the fall of Kabul. The report, which has yet to be published in its entirety, exposes a severe shortage of State Department personnel at Kabul airport to process displaced Afghans.

But the Defense Department has faced questions about Afghanistan before, albeit from a friendly Democratic House that has been criticized for not digging deep enough. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley testified to Congress about the withdrawal, as did former Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie who has openly stated that he is against a withdrawal business suit.

It will now again be contested by more hostile GOP-led House committees.

The White House is likely to stick to its stance that withdrawal from Afghanistan was the only viable option after the Trump administration signed the Doha accord with the Taliban a year earlier. Administration members argue that if the United States stayed longer it would have violated the agreement and invited attacks by the resurgent Taliban and other militant organizations.

Republicans can also investigate the effectiveness of the military’s so-called over-the-horizon options in Afghanistan, which officials promised would be a way to track down and, if necessary, target terrorist organizations.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said this summer that he was “concerned about the potential loss of sources and collection over there.” Some intelligence officials have derided the over-the-horizon strategy as “over the rainbow.”

The Biden administration can point to the precision strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in central Kabul in August as evidence of the over-the-horizon strategy’s viability. But tracking a high-value target is very different from tracking the growth of al-Qaeda across the country, and Republicans may well be missing out on that loophole.

Republicans have vowed to focus on so-called “woke” initiatives and policies in the military, to include diversity and inclusion efforts and literature and service academy discussions.

The military has at times struggled to find the best way to address grievances about “wokeness,” as the institution attempts to stay out of politics. This was on display in October when Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth addressed the complaints at the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army in Washington, DC, saying the Army needed to stay “out of wars cultural” because “we must be able to have a broad appeal”.

“When only 9 percent of guys are interested in serving, we have to make sure we’re careful not to alienate large swathes of the American public to the military,” Wormuth said.

But staying out of the conversation has become increasingly difficult as both lawmakers and media pundits have pressed officials to respond.

Republican lawmakers have criticized defense officials, including Austin and Milley, over diversity and inclusion policies, saying they are negatively impacting retention and recruiting and interfering with the military’s focus on defending the nation. However, Pentagon leaders dismissed that argument as a distraction from the military’s primary function and did not cite “wokeness” as a major recruiting challenge.

Wormuth and Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, for example, said in a July memo last year that the recruiting shortage – the most serious for the Army – was due to a declining number of young Americans. qualified to serve, Covid-19-related education restrictions, and lack of trust in American institutions.

And in March 2021, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was reprimanded by military officials after making fun of women in uniform on his show. Carlson complained that new uniforms meant to fit women properly and updated hair standards made it “a mockery of the U.S. military.” Service leaders and Pentagon officials alike have dismissed the rhetoric, instead pointing to the honorable service of women in the military.

“They are beacons of freedom and prove Carlson wrong with determination and dedication,” tweeted Gen. Paul Funk, chief of the Army’s training and doctrine command. “We’re lucky they serve with us.”

Tension over the topic of revival in the military prompted a heated exchange between Milley and Republican lawmakers in 2021 after he was asked about “critical race theory.” Milley said it’s “offensive that we’re accusing the United States military, our general officers, our NCOs of being ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

Milley discussed his frustrations with lawmakers’ politicization of the military during a Jan. 6 House Committee interview. According to the transcript of his interview, Milley acknowledged that he has “become a lightning rod for the politicization of the military,” along with many other top military officials.

“Some of these are comments I made in testimony about critical race theory and white rage. You know, so 90 seconds with Congressmen Gaetz and Waltz translates into, you know, four, five, six months of this constant drumbeat which is very damaging, in my opinion, personally, to the health of the Republic, because c ‘it is a deliberate attempt, in my view, to smear the general officer corps and the heads of the armed forces and to politicize the military, for whatever reason they feel this is valuable.

Republican Representative Michael Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico in November that the Biden administration is pushing a “progressive, society-led agenda that is being foisted upon the military” and that lawmakers “will provide supervision” and “read it”.

And just two months earlier, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, said in a statement that Republicans would “expose” the ideology of diversity and inclusion in the military service academies.

“I guarantee you,” Gallagher said, “when Congress is controlled by Republicans, as it will be in the new year, we will reject that and expose this ideology for the distraction from war that it is.”

Republicans have pledged a tougher line on US aid to Ukraine, questioning the sheer volume and the administration’s ability to effectively oversee the massive quantities of weapons and equipment flowing into Kiev. Since the start of the war, the administration has given more than $24 billion in aid to Ukraine, including the largest ever package of $2.85 billion announced on Friday.

In October, before it was clear Republicans had taken control of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy promised there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine. Last month, McCaul, who supports continued shipments of arms and aid to Ukraine, said there was still a need for “oversight and accountability”.

But some House Republicans have taken a much tougher line on Ukraine, vowing to oppose the high-value weapons packages the Biden administration has sent.

The Defense Department has a small team of personnel in Kyiv who carry out inspections of weapons and equipment supplied to Ukraine. While the team cannot visit the volatile front lines, the Pentagon says it has seen no indication that US weapons have been stolen from Ukrainian forces and ended up on the black market or elsewhere.

“We have no indication that there has been any kind of illicit disclosure,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in November.

The $40 billion aid package for Ukraine approved in May also contained requirements for oversight of arms shipments, including by the Defense Department’s inspector general. The package also requires periodic reports from the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State to the oversight committees. Last month, the omnibus spending bill devoted $6 million for oversight and inspections.

Larger and more expensive systems, such as HIMARS rocket launchers, are easier to track down on the battlefield. They all remain on duty and accounted for, according to a defense official. Harder to track are the low-cost, high-volume items that the United States sent, such as small arms and ammunition or thousands of Javelin anti-tank missiles and shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

While lawmakers sometimes included the military’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate in their criticisms of “woke” initiatives and policies, the fight over that particular complaint appears settled as the requirement was repealed in the new National Defense Authorization Act.

Republicans said the vaccine mandate negatively impacted recruiting, which was a significant challenge for services last year. Marine Corps commander Gen. David Berger also said in December that there are “still myths and misconceptions about the backstory” of the vaccine, which has impacted recruiting in “parts of the country.”

However, a Marine Corps spokesman later clarified that Berger was not referring to specific data, and Austin told a news conference that he had “not seen any concrete data that directly links the Covid mandate to an effort for our recruiting.”

It’s unclear what lawmakers would investigate regarding the mandate, although Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told Military.com last year that “[cleaning up] the mess that l “administration has done with the excessive and dangerous Covid mandates on our troops” would be one of the “top priorities” of the Republicans.

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