Pentagon leaders defend exit
Military recommended leaving some troops in Afghanistan
The nation’s top military leaders defended themselves Tuesday during a rigorous Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and U.S. Central Command Gen. Frank Mckenzie testified on the handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last month that ended a 20-year war.
The Pentagon officials repeatedly refused to reveal their private conversations with President Joe Biden on the war but stated their opinions that some U.S. forces should have been left in Afghanistan.
The bulk of questions from senators centered on the messy American exit from Afghanistan. Milley defended the military’s operations during the fall of Kabul and subsequent U.S. evacuation from the Afghan capital.
“We provided a broad range of options” to Biden, Milley said, explaining how the military shifted its mission to drawing down. He conceded the United States was not prepared for the swift collapse of the Afghan government under the onslaught of Taliban militants.
“It is clear, it is obvious the war in Afghanistan did not end in the terms we wanted with the Taliban now in power in Kabul,” the general said. “It came at an incredible cost of 11 Marines, one soldier and a Navy corpsman.” During the evacuation, a suicide bomber killed the troops in an attack on the airport in Kabul.
After the evacuation of more than 124,000 people, Austin said the United States is still getting people out of Afghanistan.
He acknowledged that “we did not get out all of our Afghan allies enrolled in the Special Immigrant Visa program” and that “noncombatant evacuations remain among the most challenging military operations, even in the best of circumstances.”
Austin, Milley and Mckenzie all agreed with the recommendation of Gen. Austin Miller, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to Biden to leave a few thousand troops in Afghanistan. They noted those were opinions and would not reveal exactly how they advised the president.
“I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. And I also recommended earlier in the fall of 2020 that we will maintain 4,500. At that time, those are my personal views,” Mckenzie told Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-okla. Mckenzie said a full withdrawal would result in the collapse of Afghanistan’s government.
Austin told Sen. Tom Cotton, R-arkansas, that Biden was briefed on keeping a minimum troop presence in the country, in the 2,500 range, which was at odds with the president’s comments.
Biden denied he was provided that recommendation during an interview Aug. 31 with ABC News. “No one said that to me that I can recall,” the president said.
Austin would not say whether his narrative contradicted the president’s comments.
Once the decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Aug. 31 was made, the risks to the U.S. military and American citizens in Afghanistan “was going to go to extremely high beginning in September” if military forces remained past the deadline, Milley told Sen. Angus King, I-maine.
Milley told Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-massachusetts, that casualties to U.S. forces would have been a “near certainty.”
The Joint Chiefs chairman estimated U.S. forces would have to go to war with the Taliban on Sept. 1.
“We would have had to clear Kabul” of 6,000 Taliban at 56 checkpoints, Milley said. “We’d have to re-seize Bagram (Airfield) and the 30 miles of road between Bagram and Kabul. That would have taken a significant amount of force.”
The operations would have resulted in “significant amounts of killed and wounded” and an increased risk to American citizens, the general said.