that there were costs and risks and lives would have been lost. that s the type of discussion that we need to have. but to jump down the president s throat because he actually had to make the decision in an impossible situation i think does a grave disservice to this committee s ability to do effective and honest nonpartisan oversight. costs were going to be borne here. there was no easy option and i do hope people will remember this as we go through the questions and answers that will proceed. with that, i yield to the ranking member. thank you, mr. chairman. general milley, was the dod in charge of making decisions about troop strength in this withdrawal, or were you in a support role? let me put it this way let
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
number one, if you are a general, you are trained to evaluate troop strength of the enemy it should be really easy. ainsley: exactly. brian: troop strength of our ally. if you can t look at the afghan forces, get on the ground and trust the people on the ground look and say i have got a problem here and this could happen rapidly. you have the wrong people on the ground. you are not asking the right questions and you can t get away with that the other thing to keep in mind, too. is that what can you expect? you never had 300,000. many of them were just cops. many of them were getting double pay. what did you expect? you knew you had 12500 fighters. you didn t give them air power. you wouldn t provide backup. you wouldn t allow the contractors to stay in country. you told the 5600 nato forces you are no longer needed. and you told them through a press conference not each directly you say well, it caught us by surprise as to speed. as modern as those hearings are
what were the alternatives? atat different stage there i may have been other alternatives. certainly when we went into afghanistan after 9/11 this war wasta supported. going after the base from which al qaeda hadse attacked america. so it had a lot of support initially. and over 20 years, it has ebbed and flow, as has the americans troop strength. president obama obama reluctantly sent forces back in on the advice of his military. the one dissenter in the top circles of our government in the national security team was then vice president joe biden. he has been consistent thinking this was a failed war and something we should not keep doing now that osama bin laden ten years ago was captured, killed in that fight. and al qaeda, after that, essentially decimated. so once the terror threat that
0 going in and out of the country. if that were to happen, big if. then the u.s. military, who are there, they will work to defense any u.s. americans who are there and to keep the airport open so they can get the americans out safely. also, though, it s important to point out, you know, there were about 1,000, less than 1,000 u.s. troops who were already there. only about a1,000, not really full 1,000 have made their way in. that total of 5,000. they are not there yet. yeah. the current plach is according to defense officials is to continue to flow those people in. but this is all happening so in quickly, you have to wonder in the next 48, 72 hours f they are not in there, are they going to have time to get all of them in. a looking at pictures, with helicopter evacuations from the green zoneli to the airport, th are looking to get this place cleared out faster than it would probably take those extra troops to get in there. let s reset. it is sunday, august 15th.h. i m ali vel