Photo: PATRICK SEMANSKY / AFP / Getty Images
The highest ranking military officer in the United States called the war a 20 years in Afghanistan as a “strategic failure” and noted Tuesday before the Congress, that the country should have kept several thousand soldiers in the region to avoid the unexpected and rapid seizure of power by the Taliban.
In his first testimony before Congress on the withdrawal, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to reveal what advice he gave President Joe Biden the spring last time, when Biden was considering keeping troops in Afghanistan .
However, he noted to the Senate Armed Services Committee that it was his personal opinion that at least 2 were needed, 500 troops to protect against the collapse of the Kabul government and the return to rule of the Taliban .
In a forceful evaluation of a war that cost 2, 461 American lives, Milley said the outcome took years to prepare.
“The results in a war like this, an outcome that is a strategic failure, the enemy is in charge in Kabul, there is no other way to describe that, it is a cumulative effect of 20 years, ”he noted.
General Frank McKenzie, who as head of Central Command had overseen the last months into the US war, he said he agreed with Milley that a few thousand troops should have been kept in Afghanistan, despite the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban in 2001 that all U.S. troops would leave in May 2021.
“I recommended that we keep 2, 500 soldiers in Afghanistan, and I also recommended early fall of 2020 that we keep 4, 500 at that time, those were my personal opinions, ”said McKenzie.
“I also had the view that the withdrawal of those forces would inevitably lead to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.”
The Senate hearing turned controversial, when Republican representatives tried to portray Biden ignoring the advice of military officials and mischaracterizing the military options that They were introduced to him last spring and summer.
Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, asked Milley why he didn’t decide to resign after his advice was rejected.
Milley, who was appointed to his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nt by President Donald Trump and hired by Biden, said it was his responsibility to give the commander-in-chief his best advice.
you have to agree with that advice, ”Milley said. “You don’t have to make those decisions just because we are generals. And it would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to resign just because my advice was not followed. ”
Real terrorist threat
Milley cited as “a very real possibility” that al-Qaida or the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State group could reconstitute itself in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban and pose a terrorist threat to states. United in the next 12 to 36 months.
Was the Al Qaeda’s use of Afghanistan as a base from which to plan and execute its attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001 triggering the US invasion of Afghanistan one month later.
“We must remember that the Taliban were and continue to be a terrorist organization and have not yet broken s ties to al-Qaida, ”Milley said.
“I have no illusions who we are dealing with. It remains to be seen whether or not the Taliban can consolidate power or whether the country will fracture further in a civil war. “
Read more
Afghanistan: the millionaire cost of US military equipment that the forces could appropriate Taliban after withdrawal
The 5 US companies that made the most revenue from the war in Afghanistan
Afghanistan: the withdrawal of the United States, Biden’s worst decision in foreign policy?