WASHINGTON – Two former top military commanders told lawmakers Tuesday that President Biden ordered the chaotic and deadly US withdrawal from Afghanistan despite warnings that it would precipitate the collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul.
Retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the ex-leader of US Central Command (CENTCOM) 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.
That analysis proved true when the Taliban overran all of Afghanistan, prompting the Biden administration to hurriedly launch the tragic evacuation mission, which committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said it had failed to properly plan and prepare for.
“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 17 – 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 evacuation mission was marred by the deaths of 170 of Afghans and 13 service members at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021, four days before the mission ended.
Since then, Republicans on the committee have pursued answers about how the US military could leave a 20-year war in so haphazard and bloody a manner.
Milley said that Biden had 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.
The former Joint Chiefs chairman testified that he was “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 added that the US-led war against the Taliban, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, was 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.”
Some of the families of service members killed at Abbey Gate attended the hearing, with McCaul pledging he would “not rest until we get to the bottom of this tragedy.”
Milley also said he was “committed to assist in the effort to get them answers,” and thanked the committee for their investigation.
“I’m personally here today voluntarily to help the families of the fallen,” Milley 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.”
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