Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, and CENTCOM Commander Kenneth McKenzie appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on September 29, 2021, a month after the last American aircraft left Kabul. Chairman Adam Smith began by pressing Austin on the option nobody in the room could stop arguing about: leaving 2,500 troops in place.
The option that was not risk-free
ChairmanThat is very frustrating, but could you talk to us a little bit about the 2,500 soldiers or service members who could have been left there and then how you approached that decision and what exactly--not what exactly your advice was to the President for what I said earlier, but how you approached that decision and then how you attempt to deal with that while advising the President?
AustinFirst of all, Chairman, let me be clear that I support the President's decision to end the war in Afghanistan. I did not support staying in Afghanistan forever. And let me also say we have talked about the process that we used to provide input to the President. I think that process was a very thorough and inclusive policy process and the recommendations of the commanders were taken into consideration, discussed, and deliberated on throughout that process. As you indicated, I typically--I will always keep my recommendations to the President confidential, but I would say that, in my view, there is no, was no, risk-free status quo option. I think that the Taliban had been clear that if we stayed there longer, they were going to recommence attacks on our forces. I think while it's conceivable that you could stay there, my view is that you would have had to deploy more forces in order to protect ourselves and accomplish any missions that we would have been assigned. It is also my view, Mr. Chairman, that the best way to end this war was through a negotiated settlement and sadly that did not happen.
[Hearing transcript, September 29, 2021, questioning by Chairman Smith.]
Ranking Member Rogers goes looking for a name
Ranking Member Mike Rogers took the first turn and spent all of it on one question.
RogersThank you, Mr. Chairman. General Milley, was the DOD [Department of Defense] in charge of making decisions about troop strength in this withdrawal or were you in a support role?
MilleyLet me put it this way-you talking about the NEO or----
RogersI am talking about--let me go back even further. In January of this year were you of the opinion, in your professional military judgment, that we should've maintained 2,500 troops, U.S. troops in support of the coalition effort and contractors in Afghanistan?
MilleyYeah. My assessment that I read in the opening statement remained consistent and----
RogersDid that professional military opinion change over the course of the next few months?
MilleyNot until Presidential decision and I rendered my opinions and it was a fulsome debate on all of that. And once decisions are made, then I am expected to execute lawful order.
RogersAnd you have made that very clear. So my question is, when the troop levels were ordered to be drawn down to zero and first stopping at 650 as General McKenzie outlined, was that your decision or General McKenzie's decision to draw down to 650?
MilleyIt was a task and then a troop-to-task analysis with the task being to go to zero, but you also have to defend the Embassy--
RogersI am thinking about the chain of command. Somebody's making decisions about troop levels and my understanding is it was not the DOD; it was the State Department or the White House. I want to know who said we are going to go from 2,500 to 650 and just protect Kabul and the State Department.
MilleyIt was a military analysis that 6- to 700 could adequately defend the Embassy until the contractors come up and that was then approved up through the chain and approved at the highest levels.
RogersWho made the decision?
MilleyI would say that decision was made in a national security consultative process by the highest levels of our government.
RogersGeneral McKenzie, did you receive advice from General Miller in the end of 2020 and early 2021 related to troop levels in Afghanistan?
McKenzieRanking Member, I did.
RogersWhat was that advice?
McKenzieThe advice, his view and my view, were essentially the same view. My view was that we needed to maintain about 2,500 and that we also needed to work with our coalition partners who had about 6,000 troops in there, NATO and other core countries that would remain there.
RogersDid your professional military opinion change over the course of the spring?
McKenzieIt did not.
RogersDid you communicate--well, I know you communicated to the President. You said you did. Were you present in the room when General Miller's recommendations were relayed to the President?
McKenzieGeneral Miller was present in executive sessions that involved myself, the Secretary here, the Chairman, and the President.
RogersAnd those recommendations of the parties as Secretary Austin said were debated fully----
McKenzieThey were debated fully. I felt that my opinion was heard with great thoughtfulness by the President.
RogersWell, you know, Secretary Austin just made the point that there was a fulsome debate of the pros and cons and the costs and risks, yet in August of this year, President Biden told George Stephanopoulos in an interview, no. No one said that to me, referring to keeping some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. Was that an inaccurate statement by the President?
McKenzieSir, I am not going to comment on a statement by the President.
RogersOkay. General McKenzie, in mid-June your commanders on the ground were informing you that things were deteriorating as you testified a little while ago. At that time, in your judgment, you should stop withdrawal, increase forces, or all proceed with the retrograde. What did you decide at that time?
McKenzieWe decided to proceed with the retrograde.
RogersOkay. Were you ordered to do that by the President?
McKenzieWe followed our original--we had original orders. We followed those orders through to completion.
RogersWas it the President's orders?
McKenzieMy orders come from the Secretary of Defense to the President. So that is a very short chain of command for me.
RogersOkay. Secretary Austin, on the 23rd, you told this committee that you had developed a very detailed plan to conduct safe, orderly, and responsible withdrawl and were executing that plan. On August 18, the President said, quote: The idea that somehow there was going to be a way that we could have gotten out with chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens, close quote. How do you reconcile those discrepancies between what you assured the Congress and what the President is telling us?
AustinThank you, sir. First of all, in terms of the withdrawl of our troops and the retrograde of equipment, that plan as developed by General Miller and General McKenzie was executed as planned, and all of our equipment was retrograded and we drew down the force that we wanted to draw down to that very small force that you saw at the Embassy at the very end there. The chaos that ensued followed the collapse of the military and the collapse of the government, and when those two things happen, then it was going to be a chaotic situation.
[Hearing transcript, September 29, 2021, questioning by Ranking Member Rogers.]
Two missions, and whose failure it was
Representative Rob Wittman returned to the same ground and asked Milley to grade the Commander in Chief.
WittmanGentlemen, thanks so much for your testimony today. General Milley, I want to begin with you, and I want to build on a question that Ranking Member Rogers asked. On August 18, President Biden said that there is no way possible that U.S. troops could be withdrawn from Afghanistan without the chaos that we saw unfold. In your best military judgment, was there a way to extract the troops without the chaos that we saw unfold?
MilleyI just want to be clear, we are talking two different missions. The retrograde of the troops to 2,500 everybody is talking about, those were advisors. That was complete by mid-July. And that was done, actually, without any significant incident. And that is the handover of 11 bases, the bringing out of a lot of equipment, et cetera. That was done under the command of General Miller. The noncombatant evacuation operation is different. The noncombatant operation, that was done under conditions of great volatility, great violence, great threat. And we inserted 6,000 troops on relatively short notice because there were some contingency plans to do that. That is a different operation. And I think that the first 2 days of that, as we saw, were not only chaotic but violent and high-risk. But, because of the skill and leadership of our troops, they were able to get control of a situation in the airfield in that country that was falling apart and then execute the operation. So I think it would have been difficult under any circumstances, and I think our soldiers performed extraordinarily well, actually, in 48 hours getting control of an airfield in another country eight and a half time zones away.
WittmanBut I understand that, but you are talking about a very compressed timeframe. I am talking about the full extent about what you are looking at. You can talk about two missions, but I am talking about, in totality of what we are looking at there was a chaotic and disaggregated effort. It seems like to me that your professional military judgment would probably not have been focused in your recommendations in seeing this outcome. I just wanted to get your----
MilleyMy recommendations at the time and my analysis at the time were aligned, actually, with what you have heard from General Miller previously and General McKenzie, was flatline at about 2,500 and go for a negotiated solution and make sure it is conditions-based. And we all render our advice, and Presidents make decisions, and then we execute.
WittmanThis morning, you stated that the withdrawal was a logistical success but a strategic failure. And I would say that probably American citizens and the Special Immigrant Visa holders would probably disagree, those that were left behind would probably disagree with your assessment of a logistical success. That being said, I want to focus on the strategic failure aspect of that. You said yesterday that all you can do--and you just said it now--all you can do is provide your best advice, and it is up to the President to make the ultimate decision. In your best military judgment, did President Biden's decisions cause this strategic failure?
MilleyI think, as I said yesterday--first of all, I am not going to judge a President. That is the job of the American people, that is the job of Congress, not my job.
WittmanNo, I am asking for your best military judgment--for your judgment.
MilleyYeah. So my assessment is, this was a 20-year war, and it wasn't lost in the last, you know, 20 days or even 20 months, for that matter. It was a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back--you know, bin Laden, right on the Tora Bora, for example. We knew where he was, we were 1,000 meters away, could have ended it, perhaps, right there. The shift from going into Iraq and pulling all the troops out of Afghanistan, with the exception of a few others--major strategic decision. Not effectively dealing with Pakistan as a sanctuary--major strategic issue that we are going to have to really unpack. The intelligence piece, pulling advisors off 3 or 4 years ago out of kandaks, so we blinded ourselves from our ability to see the will, the morale, the leadership, and the training. There is a whole series of decisions that take place over 20 years. I don't think that, whenever you get some phenomenon like a war that is lost--and it has been, in the sense of we accomplished our strategic task of protecting America against al-Qaida, but certainly the end state is a whole lot different than what we wanted. So, whenever a phenomenon like that happens, there are an awful lot of causal factors, and we are going to have to figure that out. A lot of lessons learned here.
[Hearing transcript, September 29, 2021, questioning by Rep. Wittman.]
What to call it
Representative Mike Gallagher had read a Washington Post account of McKenzie’s August 15 meeting with the Taliban deputy leader in Doha.
GallagherThank you. General McKenzie, the Washington Post reported on August 28th that the Taliban offered to allow the U.S. military to take responsibility for security in Kabul. Did you meet with Mullah Baradar to discuss such an offer?
McKenzieI met with Mullah Baradar in Doha on 15 August to pass a message to him that we were withdrawing and if they attempted to disrupt that withdrawl, we would punish them severely for that.
GallagherBut did he offer to allow you to have security over all of Kabul?
McKenzieAs part of that conversation, he said, well, why don't you just take security for all of Kabul. That was not why I was there. That was not my instruction. And we did not have the resources to undertake that mission.
GallagherDid you convey the offer, however, to the President?
McKenzieThe offer was made in the presence of the President's Special Representative to Afghanistan.
GallagherDo you know if the SRAP [U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan] conveyed it to the President?
McKenzieI don't know, but it was conveyed to my chain of command.
GallagherSo who made the decision to turn down the Taliban offer to allow the U.S. military to secure Kabul and put the safety of our troops in the hands of the Taliban?
McKenzieI did not consider that to be a formal offer and it was not the reason why I was there, so I did not pursue it. So if someone actually made a decision that would have been me.
GallagherSo we don't know if it was conveyed to the President? We don't know----
McKenzieI do know it was conveyed to my chain of command.
GallagherOkay. In military terms, what do you call the retreat of military forces under security provided by and with the permission of enemy forces?
McKenzieDon't know. I have never done one of those operations.
GallagherI think you just did one of those operations.
McKenzieI disagree.
GallagherYou disagree. So you did not withdraw forces from Afghanistan after negotiation with the Taliban?
McKenzieThat is correct. We did not do that.
GallagherOkay. So this would not be a conditional surrender, in your opinion?
McKenzieThis would not be a conditional surrender.
GallagherWell, what would you describe the operation?
McKenzieI would describe it as a noncombatant evacuation operation that we conducted with our own timing and with our own forces, and we warned the Taliban that if they interfered with that operation, we would strike them hard. They chose not to interfere with that operation.
GallagherOkay. So you are saying the meeting you had in Doha was just to let the Taliban know this is what we are doing, you know, take or leave it, but you were operating at that point under the agreement we had negotiated with the Taliban for surrender, right, the Doha Agreement?
McKenzieI was there to tell the Taliban that we were conducting a noncombatant evacuation operation.
GallagherWait, wait. Not a NEO by DOD definition does not definitionally include the evacuation of combatants. You were also evacuating combatants. So the NEO was part of the operation?
McKenzieActually, no, you are wrong. When I met with the Taliban on 15 August, we had completed the withdrawal operation. Further forces that went in were forces that were core to the NEO operation and, in fact, DOD doctrine would include the insertion and extraction of combatant forces as part of a NEO operation----
GallagherBut what do we call the withdrawl of combatants whether it happened before----
McKenzieIt can be called a retrograde, it can be called a withdrawal.
GallagherWas it in your orders, though? What were you tasked with doing?
McKenzieI was tasked to conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation.
GallagherWhich you just said happened after you had withdrawn forces?
McKenzieLargely, that is correct.
GallagherOkay. And you didn't get tasking--what did the tasking to withdrawl the forces call that operation?
McKenzieI would have to go back and take a look at it. I believe it was a withdrawl.
GallagherWithdrawl. Okay. Which I believe the definition is a repositioning of forces. I would call it a conditional surrender. I guess we will have to check the dictionary definition on that. Just to go to something that General Milley said before, has al-Qaida sworn bayat to the Taliban?
McKenzieI believe there is a deep relationship between the Taliban----
GallagherBut have they sworn bayat? Just yes or no.
McKenzieI couldn't answer that question for you right now.
GallagherOh. I believe General Milley said it before. Has the Taliban renounced the previous oath that al-Qaida swore?
McKenzieThe Taliban and al-Qaida have a very close relationship, and I do not expect the Taliban to seriously interfere with their basing and repositioning in Afghanistan, which is, I think, the question you are asking.
GallagherOkay. Yeah. Let me get at it a different way. The new interior minister for the Taliban Government is Sirajuddin Haqqani. He is a known al-Qaida associate. Is there any evidence that he or the Haqqani network has broken with al-Qaida?
McKenzieNone.
[Hearing transcript, September 29, 2021, questioning by Rep. Gallagher.]
The ring around Kabul
Representative Andy Kim, a former State Department adviser on Afghanistan, asked what had actually been agreed with the Taliban and when.
KimThank you, Mr. Chairman. General McKenzie, I wanted to start with you. You said reports about you engaging with the Taliban about a red line around Kabul before its fall were false. Does that mean that there was no discussion or consideration in the U.S. of a plan to defend Kabul in early August before its fall?
McKenzieThere was never a discussion about a plan to defend Kabul before its fall. I will say that when I went to Doha, I took with me a graphic. It was a map of Kabul with a 30-kilometer ring on the outside. Our original proposal was, we would ask the Taliban to stay outside that ring, but we were not going to threaten them. We felt that was the best way to do deconfliction; however, on the day of the meeting, they were already in downtown Kabul, so the graphic was outdated and we had to proceed from the new reality.
KimSecretary Austin, I wanted to get your thoughts on this. When I spent some time in the Situation Room with you in 2014 when we were fearing the fall of Erbil and Baghdad, U.S. CENTCOM Commander immediately drew up some CONOPS [concept of operations] defending those positions using air assets. The effort was to buy time for the Iraqis and the Iraqi Kurds to reconstitute. Did it not cross your mind to consider something like that in early August before the fall of Kabul?
AustinThis is certainly something we considered, you know. We took a look at what we would need to do to protect the Embassy and if we had to do a NEO, what could we do to buy time for that operation to take place.
KimChairman Milley, I wanted to switch to you. Yesterday you said that you were asked on August 25th to make a decision about the August 31st deadline. Was there an actual formal request made to the Taliban by the United States to stay past August 31st? Was that a request that was then denied that you were taking into account in that decision?
MilleyI don't make decisions, Congressman. I provide advice.
KimIn your recommendation.
MilleyI was asked for what is called best military advice. I am not aware of a formal request to the Taliban one way or the other on staying past the 31st. I am very familiar with the advice that we provided on the 25th.
KimBefore the fall of Kabul, did we actually have formal Taliban agreement upon an August 31st departure date?
MilleyI am not sure what you mean by "formal," but I do--I think----
KimHad there ever been a point where the United States went to the Taliban saying that we are planning to leave on August 31st? I am talking about prior to the fall of Kabul.
MilleyI think from a policy perspective Zal Khalilzad could give you the detailed information on that. I do believe the Taliban knew that we were departing on the 31st. We announced it.
KimBut you weren't aware of it----
MilleyI am not aware of a formal agreement per se, but I think Zal Khalilzad could give you better definition of that.
KimGeneral McKenzie, I want to turn back to you then because you were saying that you talked with the Taliban on August 15th. Did you use August 31st as a date to end the operations? Was there a date set at all in your discussions with----
McKenzieI did not use a specific date when I talked to them.
KimSo no date was set on August 15th----
McKenzieI did not convey a specific date as part of my conversation.
[Hearing transcript, September 29, 2021, questioning by Rep. Kim.]
The strike, and the prisoners
The last questioner of the day was Representative Pat Fallon, who went back to the August 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed ten members of one family.
FallonThank you, Mr. Chair. During this hearing, the virtue of courage was used to describe the current President and I think that is misplaced. I think the virtue of courage should be attributed to the 2,461 troops that we lost, that gave everything; the 20,698 that were maimed and injured and wounded; and the 800,000 that served. I am a little perplexed and thank you for being here. I wanted to clear something up. During the testimony, General McKenzie, you were asked when you knew that the drone strike on August 29th had gone tragically wrong and correct me, just yes or no, you said about 5 or 6 hours later you learned that. Is that correct?
McKenzieThat is when we learned that civilians had been killed.
FallonSo it went wrong?
McKenzieNo. I did not say that.
FallonOkay.
McKenzieI said that is when we learned that civilians had been killed----
FallonWould you have considered 5 or 6 hours later a righteous strike?
McKenzieWe took that strike based on the belief that the vehicle was going to be used in an attack against us.
FallonSo we knew that people that shouldn't have been killed were killed 5 or 6 hours after, yes?
McKenzieWe knew that probably people that were not involved [inaudible] took us a little longer to learn the rest of the story.
FallonAgreed. Secretary Austin, same? You learned about 5 or 6 hours after that people that should not have been killed were killed?
AustinI learned from General McKenzie's reporting that there was collateral damage. And whenever that happens, we investigate.
FallonOkay. Thank you. Okay. And then, General Milley, on September 1st, 3 days later, you described it as "a righteous strike." People that were not supposed to be killed were killed and you described it as "a righteous strike."
MilleyYou have to go back and look at the full quote. What I said was, we followed the procedures, I had every reason to believe that we followed our procedures at that point in time. We knew that there were civilians killed. We knew they were noncombatants and there was collateral damage.
FallonYes. You said were others killed? Yes. Who were they, we don't know. We are trying to sort through all that.
MilleyThat is right. Because I believed, I believed that the target that we were aiming----
FallonOkay. I have 3 more minutes. Now General Milley, you served under both President Trump and Biden?
MilleyCorrect.
FallonIf conditions aren't met and we withdraw, how long is the Afghan Government going to last--back then?
MilleyI am not going to speak for them; I will speak for myself----
FallonPlease do.
MilleyI am on record having said that if we go to zero that there is a high probability of the government and the Afghan Army collapsing. In terms of time, I put that at between 1 and 3 years at the time I wrote this stuff back in a year ago in the fall of 2020.
FallonOkay. That is interesting when you say that because when I talked to both Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Ratcliffe, they told me that there was unanimity, even President Trump said, if conditions are not met that the Afghan Army and the government would collapse within weeks and the longest they heard maybe a month or two. That's what they gave me. Because I was just surprised that because Secretary Austin said in his remarks today that the fact that the Afghan Army--we and our partners trained simply melted away in many cases was a shock. John Ratcliffe told me he told his successor that they were going to collapse instantaneously if those conditions weren't met; they were going to evaporate. And now [inaudible] but I think--General Milley, with all due respect----
MilleySure.
FallonWhat I think it is, it was not a failure of intelligence; it seems to me--I didn't know this stuff. I wasn't in the room, you were, that it was a failure to heed that intelligence and act accordingly.
MilleyI can show you the intelligence reports that were produced under Mr. Ratcliffe----
FallonAll right. So we got 5,000 bad guys in Bagram, in jail at Bagram, right? Am I right, General McKenzie? And then we go down to 650, we can't hold it so we split around July 1st I think we left.
McKenzie12th.
FallonJuly 12th and it fell August 15th, correct? And they got out then? August 16th? And then we have an attack on our troops couple weeks later. Can any of you guarantee the American people that out of those 5,000 bad guy scumbags none of them were directly responsible for killing our troops?
McKenzieNo. I cannot guarantee that.
MilleyI cannot guarantee that, no.
[Hearing transcript, September 29, 2021, questioning by Rep. Fallon.]
Milley had opened the day by telling the committee that the airlift of 124,000 people was a tactical, operational, and logistical success and that the war was a strategic failure. Nobody at the witness table disputed the second half of that sentence. What none of the three would say, through six hours of questioning, was whose decision produced it.