Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, on Sunday laid the blame for the Taliban takeover with Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden and their mistaken decision to remove all troops from the country.
Tuesday marks the first anniversary of the last American soldier flying out of Kabul, at the end of a chaotic evacuation.
‘I advised against withdrawing,’ said McKenzie in an interview with Fox News to mark the event.
‘My recommendation and my opinion. and it remains so today, was we had the opportunity to remain in the country with a small force.
‘I realise the Taliban could very well have chosen to attack us, but I do not believe based on the intelligence I was reading at the time that we would have, we would have been forced to add more forces in order to maintain, you know, 2500 force level in Afghanistan.’
Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, on Sunday laid the blame for the Taliban takeover with Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden and their mistaken decision to remove all troops from the countr
The last American soldier to leave Afghanistan climbed aboard a C-17 transport plane just before midnight on August 30, 2021, ending the U.S. war in the country
August brought a rash of Afghanistan anniversaries. The Taliban seized Kabul on August 15 last year and the last U.S. troops left on August 30. The most painful date was August 26, one year after 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans died in a suicide attack at the airport
The Taliban marked the anniversary of their takeover of Kabul on August 15 this year
Biden announced in April last year that he would bring home all remaining U.S. troops by September 11 of 2021 – the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that took American troops to Afghanistan in the first place.
His decision built on a Trump administration deal with the Taliban that American forces would leave.
But the withdrawal of foreign contractors and U.S. air support – on which the Afghan armed forces had come to rely – triggered a rapid Taliban advance.
And their gunmen entered the Afghan capital two weeks before U.S. forces were due to complete their exit, generating frantic scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport where desperate Afghans tried to secure passage to safety.
In the bleakest moment of Biden’s presidency, an Islamic State suicide bomber used the chaos as cover to kill 13 American personnel and at least 170 Afghans.
McKenzie said military figures knew that the government there would not survive without outside forces.
Taliban fighters ride in a convoy near the U.S. embassy in Kabul on Monday, August 15, 2021 marking one year since they took control of Afghanistan upon the U.S. troop withdrawal
Taliban fighters flying the group’s white and black flag and carrying American-made rifles parade outside the shuttered US embassy in Kabul on Monday, marking a year since they re-took control of the country
‘We believed that Kabul would fall if we pulled out our troops. It was just a question of when Kabul would fall,’
‘And we had been saying that really since the fall of the year before. That had been a consistent position of central command our subordinates in Afghanistan, that if we leave, they’re going to collapse.
‘It’s just a question of when they’re going to collapse.’
McKenzie said political decisionmakers made another mistake. After deciding to withdraw to zero, they wanted to maintain an ’embassy platform,’ which added to the strain.
‘The president of the United States owns the final responsibility for these actions,’ he said.
‘I believe we had two presidents of the United States that wanted to exit Afghanistan, and they might not have had anything else in common, but they shared that common view.
‘So we had a continuity of objective across two administrations that really allowed the events that occurred to occur in the manner that they did.’
Republicans have kept up a drumbeat of calls to ensure accountability for the decisions that led to the Taliban takeover.
Last week Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House foreign affairs committee, said the anniversary of the suicide bombing reflected the mistakes made by Biden and his officials as they ignored warning from generals and regional experts.
‘It didn’t have to be this way,’ he said.
‘Americans deserve answers, and I will not stop until a thorough investigation has been conducted.’
On Friday, Biden marked the anniversary of the attack with a statement saying the 13 represented the very best of the ‘American character.’
‘They were beloved sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. They came from all across our land,’ he said.
‘Each carried with them the pride of their own unique story and the hopes of the loved ones who nurtured them.
‘But they were united by a common call—to serve something greater than themselves. They were heroes, working to save lives as part of the largest airlift evacuation operation in our history.’
He attracted anger by later leaving the White House to film a light-hearted segment with comedian Jay Leno for his car show.