defeat al qaeda and to ensure the afghanistan would no longer be safe haven for terrorists. fast-forward 20 years, conditions, general milley said six to 36 months, will be launching strikes like that and targeting against us. it doesn t feel like it is anything other than surrender. general mckenzie, you had mentioned that tolding bagram was untenable under the circumstances and the bagram option went away when giving end strength of 650, i understand that. i think you mean untenable because of the troop limitation. if not limited would your professional advice been to relinquish bagram? troop level 2500, we would have health bagram, that was my recommendation, that was my position. okay. so you had also mentioned no
more than 650 service members. it was not feasible to preserve the u.s. embassy in kabul, hold and defend hamid karzai international airport, the embassy s key link to the outside world, and also defend bagram airfield with 650 soldiers and marines. this is important. the bagram option went away when we ordered to reduce our presence to the 650 personnel in kabul. i would like to shift briefly to the neo, which i have noted, was a completely different operation than the withdrawal. they were separate. the withdrawal began in april, following the president s direction. the decision to conduct a neo rested with the department of state, and they made that decision on 14 august. in our neo planning, central command assumed that we would have to bring out a very large number of people. we did not regard the size of a potential neo as overwhelming or too much to accomplish. we did not regard a taliban takeover as inevitable, but neither did we rule it out.
april was to plan for a diplomatic security force of no more than 650 service members. it was not feasible to preserve the u.s. embassy in kabul, hold and defend the international airport, embassy s key link to the outside world and defend bagram airfield with 650 soldiers and marines. this is important. the bagram option went away when we were ordered to reduce our presence to the 650 personnel in kabul. i would like to ift briefly to the neo, it was a completely different operation than a withdrawal. they were separate. the withdrawal began in april following the president s direction. the decision to conduct a neo rested with the department of state and they made that decision on 14 august. in our neo planning central command assumed there was a large number of people. we did not regard a taliban takeover as inevitable but
0 during this process, the views of all of the joint chiefs of staff, all of us, the centcom commander, general mckenzie, general miller, and myself were all given serious consideration by the administration. we provided a broad range of options and our assessment of their potential outcomes. we couched that in cost, benefit, risk-to-force, risk-to-mission. all of that was evaluated against the national security objectives of the united states. on 14 april, the president of the united states, president biden, announced his decision, and the u.s. military received a change of mission, to retrograde all u.s. military forces, maintain a small contingency force of 6 to 700 to protect the embassy in kabul, until the department of state could coordinate contractor security support, and also to assist turkey to maintain the hamid karzai international airport and to transition the u.s. mission to over the horizon counterterrorism sport and security force systems. it is clear, it is obvious to