https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/generals-contradict-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-lloyd-billingsley-0/
“I know president to be and honest and forthright man.” That was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Trouble was, the questioner, Sen. Tom Cotton, did not ask Austin for his opinion of Joe Biden.
The Arkansas Republican, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, wanted to know if it was true that, as Joe Biden said last month in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, no senior military officer advised him to leave troops behind in Afghanistan.
“Their input was received by the president and considered by the president for sure,” Austin testified but the senior military officers weren’t going to speak of “what they personally recommended in confidence.”
As U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testified, the officers recommended the United States maintain a presence of at least 2,500 U.S. service members in Afghanistan. Gen. McKenzie told the committee he made a similar recommendation in the fall of 2020 under the Trump administration. The general believed “the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.”
Asked about future military involvement in Afghanistan, Gen. McKenzie said the United States reserved the right to go after ISIS and al-Qaeda targets, but “it will not be easy to do that.”
Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee his assessment was to maintain 2500-3500 troops and “move toward a negotiated solution.” On the other hand, Milley told Sen. Cotton, “I don’t discuss exactly what my conversations are with a sitting president in the Oval Office.”
Cotton pointed out that Kabul fell on August 15, and wondered why it took 10 days to ask about the continued presence of U.S. forces. If all this is true, Cotton said, “then why haven’t you resigned?”