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The US Congress approved the Defense budget: $ 778 billion, 28 more than the previous one. A budget adopted with the support of Republicans, and which President Joe Biden must now sign for it to take effect. Among other things, it provides for the creation of a commission of inquiry into the war in Afghanistan.
The commission, made up of sixteen members chosen by the Democrats and Republicans, will have to present, at the latest one year after its creation, a report on the twenty years of war in Afghanistan, and draw lessons from it.
On the program: not only the agreement concluded by Donald Trump with the Taliban setting a withdrawal deadline for the American forces, but also the launching of this war by George Bush after the attacks of September 11, as well as the decision of Barack Obama to send tens of thousands of American troops to assist in 2009.
This 2022 defense budget also reaffirms United States support for Taiwan, as China increases pressure on the island and threatens to reintegrate by force what it still considers part of its territory.
Finally, a reform of military justice is planned, on the prosecution of sexual assault, including the judgment of these crimes by court martial by an independent authority.
But the text does not go as far as the elected progressive wished, yet supported last June by the Minister of Defense. They wanted it to no longer be the military hierarchy that decides whether the alleged perpetrators of this violence should be prosecuted or not.
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