Generals explain Biden's Afghan debacle
The top two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation of Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 blamed the Biden administration for the chaotic departure, telling lawmakers Tuesday that it inadequately planned for the evacuation and did not order it in time.
The rare testimony by the two retired generals publicly exposed for the first time the strain and differences the military leaders had with the Biden administration in the final days of the war. Two of those key differences included that the military had advised that the U.S. keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to maintain stability and a concern that the State Department was not moving fast enough to get an evacuation started.
The remarks contrasted with an internal White House review of the administration’s decisions found that President Joe Biden’s decisions had been “severely constrained” by previous withdrawal agreements negotiated by former President Donald Trump and blamed the military, saying top commanders said they had enough resources to handle the evacuation.
Thirteen U.S. service members were killed by a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport's Abbey Gate in the final days of the war, as the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
Thousands of panicked Afghans and U.S. citizens desperately tried to get on U.S. military flights that were airlifting people out. In the end the military was able to rescue more than 130,000 civilians before the final U.S. military aircraft departed.
That chaos was the end result of the State Department failing to call for an evacuation of U.S. personnel until it was too late, both former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Evacuation orders must come from the State Department, but in the weeks and months before Kabul fell to the Taliban, the Pentagon was pressing the State Department for evacuation plans, and was concerned that State was not ready, McKenzie said.
“We had forces in the region as early as 9 July, but we could do nothing," McKenzie said.
“I believe the events of mid and late August 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the (evacuation) for several months, in fact until we were in extremis and the Taliban had overrun the country," McKenzie said.
Milley was the nation's top-ranking military officer at the time, and had urged President Joe Biden to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces there to give Afghanistan's special forces enough back-up to keep the Taliban at bay and allow the U.S. military to hold on to Bagram Air Base, which could have provided the military additional options to respond to Taliban attacks.
Biden did not approve the larger residual force, opting to keep a smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the U.S. embassy. That smaller force was not adequate to keeping Bagram, which was quickly taken over by the Taliban.
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As with many military debacles, the planning was too little and too late and Biden was primarily responsible for that. The results left Biden wounded and ineffective as president and his polling never recovered. It is still not clear how many Americans may have been left behind, not to mention Afghan allies who were left behind.
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