Generals Thrash Biden’s Failed Withdrawal From Afghanistan

In both public and private classified briefings, a pair of generals recently testified that the Biden Administration’s slow timing and incompetence led to the disastrous withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2021.   

Both said that they adamantly opposed the White House plan to push withdrawal and that it led to terrible results for American soldiers and Afghan allies. 

Retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and retired Gen. Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, out of uniform and sporting gray hair and dark suits, were still constrained from revealing their conversations with President Joe Biden but made clear they believed then, and still believe now, that abandoning Afghanistan, and in particular the way the withdrawal was carried out, was a mistake that had deadly consequences, writes The Washington Examiner.

While there were dozens of decisions that led up to the debacle at the Abbey Gate of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, where on August 26, 2021, an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 American service members and 170 Afghans, McKenzie placed much of the blame for the chaos on Biden’s decision not to evacuate American diplomats and civilians, along with Afghan allies, at the same time U.S. troops were leaving.

“I believe that the events of mid- and late August of 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the NEO [noncombatant evacuation operation] for several months, in fact, until we were in extremis and the Taliban had overrun the country,” McKenzie told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The decision to begin an NEO rests with the Department of State, not the Department of Defense. We had begun positioning forces in the region as early as July 9, but we could do nothing, nothing to commence the operation, the evacuation until the NEO was declared.”

Milley agreed, calling the plan to keep the U.S. Embassy in Kabul open in a war zone, protected by just 600 troops, “untenable.” 

“The fundamental mistake, fundamental flaw was the timing of the State Department’s call,” Milley said. “I think that was too slow and too late.”

Devastating. General Milley confirms that Afghan allies have been brutally murdered by the Taliban.

“I think some of the Afghans were tracked down that worked with us and I think some of them were killed. I'm pretty certain some of them [were killed] in pretty brutal ways…” pic.twitter.com/SJeH0G0Wvu

— Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) March 19, 2024

On August 26, 2021, a suicide bomber at Abbey Gate of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport killed 11 Marines, a Navy corpsman and a soldier, along with nearly 170 Afghan civilians. 

Biden has failed to acknowledge his failure, and during the 2024 State of the Union address, security arrested one of the fathers of the fallen American soldiers who disrupted the president’s speech by yelling for accountability.