9/29/2021- 1:28 p.m.
Top military leaders said Tuesday that they had recommended to President Joe Biden that the U.S. keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan even after the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, contradicting the president’s assertion last month that his advisers did not tell him to leave a small military presence in the country.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, who oversaw the withdrawal as head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in testimony before Congress that they had communicated that advice to the president.
“We saw it coming,” he said, adding that Biden ignored the advice of the military and Congress, and “failed to anticipate what all of us knew would happen.”
“President Biden made a strategic decision to leave Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members, the deaths of hundreds of Afghan civilians, including women and children — that’s what terrorists do — and left American citizens surrounded by the very terrorists who attacked us.”
Austin and Milley are also scheduled to testify before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. McKenzie is testifying as well.
On Tuesday, Milley also addressed reporting in a new book that said he took steps to prevent Trump from misusing the nuclear arsenal, and conveyed to a Chinese counterpart that he would warn him ahead of time if the U.S. was going to launch an attack on his country. The general said other administration officials were aware of the calls and he was not trying to “usurp authority or insert myself into the chain of command.”
“My task at that time was to de-escalate,” he said, adding that he made the calls to assure Chinese officials that there would not be attacks by the U.S. military after intelligence officials flagged concerns that the Chinese believed such a strike possible.
