On Tuesday, Gen. McKenzie and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, confirmed that President Biden had ignored their advice on maintaining a peacekeeping force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from overrunning the country.
“I won’t share my personal recommendation to the president, but I will give you my honest opinion,” McKenzie said to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And my honest opinion and view shaped my recommendation. I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and I also recommended earlier in the fall of 2020 that we maintain 4,500 at that time. Those are my personal views. I also [had] a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.”
According to The Hill, “Milley said he agreed with that assessment and that it was his personal view dating back to last fall that the U.S. should maintain at least 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to move toward a peace agreement between the Taliban and Afghan government.”
Milley said, “My assessment was, back in the fall of ’20, and it remained consistent throughout, that we should keep a steady state of 2,500 [troops].”
The Generals’ testimonies contradict a claim made by President Biden in an August interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
Your top military advisers warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops,” Stephanopoulos said at the time.
“No, they didn’t! It was split,” Biden claimed. “That wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.”
