Ex-general recounts opposition to disastrous Afghanistan pullout, laments Biden ‘strategic failure’ in Hill testimony
WASHINGTON — Two former top military commanders told lawmakers Tuesday that President Biden ordered the chaotic and deadly US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — despite warnings that it would precipitate the collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul — and then waited too long to initiate the evacuation mission.
Retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, ex-leader of US Central Command, appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a bid to shed new light on the tragic pullout, which both men oversaw.
While Milley and McKenzie have testified multiple times before Congress about the withdrawal, Tuesday’s voluntary appearances marked the first time they had done so since their retirements — leading lawmakers to believe they would speak more freely about what happened in the days and weeks before the Afghanistan calamity.
“My personal analysis was that an accelerated withdrawal would likely lead to the general collapse of the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government, resulting in a large-scale civil war reminiscent of the 1990s or a complete Taliban takeover,” Milley told the panel.
However, the retired general added, Biden overruled his advice to keep several hundred troops in Afghanistan, claiming that he was sticking to a plan set in motion by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Milley added that he was also “not in favor of a unilateral withdrawal of US forces because of my assessment of the associated costs and risks” of doing so without a permanent cease-fire and power-sharing agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
“The fundamental tension facing the president — in fact, two presidents — was that no one could satisfactorily explain when or even if those conditions would ever be met,” Milley said. “And if we stayed indefinitely, an open war would likely begin with the Taliban again, with increased risk of additional casualties.”
Milley’s analysis proved accurate when the Taliban overran all of Afghanistan, prompting the Biden administration to hurriedly launch the tragic August evacuation mission, which committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said it had failed to properly organize.
“This committee learned that the State Department did not even request an emergency evacuation until after Kabul was surrounded by the Taliban [in mid-August],” he said. “As a result, the [international] airport was not secured until August 17th — two days after Kabul fell.“
“As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail — and fail they did,” McCaul added.
The generals told the committee that the State Department waited too long to initiate the full-scale noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO), which led to thousands of Afghans flooding Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport over the span of just two weeks.
“As you are aware, the decision to begin a NEO rests with the Department of State, not the Department of Defense,” McKenzie said. “But we could do nothing, nothing to commence the operation – the evacuation – until a NEO was declared.”
McCaul agreed with the generals’ assessment, noting “disturbing” findings that “State Department leadership prohibited its employees from even uttering the word ‘NEO’ … until as late as August of 2021,” he said. “Too little, too late.”
The evacuation mission was marred by the deaths of 170 Afghans and 13 US service members at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021, four days before the mission ended.
On Tuesday, McKenzie said he would take the blame for the tragedy.
“I was the overall commander, and I and I alone bear full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate,” McKenzie said.
Since the end of the US mission in Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, Republicans on the committee have pursued answers about how the military could end a 20-year war in so haphazard and bloody a manner — leaving behind scores of Americans and Afghans who assisted Western forces along the way.
“I’ll be candid,” Milley said. “I don’t know the exact number of Americans that were left behind because the starting number was never clear. Same is true of at-risk Afghans … those numbers varied so widely that they were quite inaccurate, as best I could tell at the time. I would just say, I am not sure, even today, about the accuracy of all those numbers.”
When Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) inquired further about the fate of Afghans who threw in with the US, Milley answered: “I think some were killed … I think some of the Afghans were tracked down that worked with us, and I think some of them were killed in — I’m pretty certain, some of them in pretty brutal ways. Some managed to escape through various means, others have just laid low and are keeping their heads down.”
Milley summed up the US-led operation against the Taliban, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, as a “strategic failure.”
“The enemy occupied Kabul,” he recounted. “The overthrow of the government occurred, and the military we supported for two decades faded away.”
To date, no Biden officials have been fired or otherwise held accountable for decisions made related to Afghanistan, as Biden and his allies insist the withdrawal was the right course of action, and an “extraordinary success.”
Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, argued the hearing was a repetition of others the committee had held before, saying lawmakers instead should focus on “the entire 20 years of being in Afghanistan.”
“There’s nothing groundbreaking here,” Meeks claimed.
But the families of service members killed at Abbey Gate disagree, and McCaul pledged he would “not rest until we get to the bottom of this tragedy.”
“I think they’re still trying to cover their tails,” Gold Star dad Darin Hoover told The Post in a phone interview after watching the proceedings. “It’s another smack in the face again.”
Hoover has been demanding answers from top military brass ever since his son, Marine Staff Sg. Darin “Taylor” Hoover, lost his life in the Aug. 26, 2021, attack. He said he regretted not being able to attend the hearing and “would have gladly given up the State of the Union,” which he attended March 7 as a guest of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
“I can’t afford, you know, $1,500 every time I fly out,” he said, before listing some questions he would have liked to ask the generals.
“Why aren’t they listening to their boots on the ground? Why are they making the decisions that they’re making from a political standpoint instead of a military standpoint?”
Hoover added that he felt Milley and McKenzie downplayed their own knowledge of the Taliban’s capabilities.
“Back on August 15th of 2021, [McKenzie] sat down with the Taliban and Ambassador Zal[may Mamozy Khalilzad] and made the determination that the Taliban would be in charge of the security, and yet he played it down today,” he said.
“He was not forthcoming. He might have taken some of the responsibility, but at the end of the day, he still had his stars and didn’t put them on the table.”
Still, Milley said he was “committed to assist in the effort to get them answers,” and thanked the committee for its investigation.
“I’m personally here today voluntarily to help the families of the fallen,” he said. “The 13 fallen at Abbey Gate, and the thousands of fallen and tens of thousands of wounded — and countless other members who suffer the invisible wounds of war — to help them get answers.”
