0 retake bagram then? >> thank you, senator. you are right, the tempo had picked up significantly. the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie, routinely engaged in after began leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops and stiffen their defenses to no avail. and to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. >> mr. secretary i don't mean to interrupt but my time is lapsing. this gets to the overestimation, i think the overly optimistic assessment. even as late as july you are still encouraging the afghan special forces, you are expecting the ghani government to remain, but that was not the case. in december of 2019 the "washington post" reported the u.s. military commanders privately expressed a lack of confidence that the afghan army and police could ever fend off or defeat the taliban on their own. so general milley, you noted there are some specific military lessons to be learned. this is not the first time that i think we have relied upon overly optimistic assessments of conditions on the ground or conflict conditions. certainly happened in vietnam. so my question to you is what specific steps can we take to make sure that our assessments are not overly optimistic so we can avoid the kind of reliance on assessments that are not accurate? >> i think in the case of working with other countries' armies it's important to have advisors with the units to do assessments that are difficult to measure, morale factors, leadership, will. that's one key aspect. another part that i think is important and a lesson from vietnam and today is don't americanize the war. we learned that in el salvador or columbia where we did assist and help other country's armies fight you are surgeon sees and quite effective but it was their country, their army that bore the burden of all the fighting. and we had very, very few advisors and it was effective. every country and war is different has to be evaluated but i think those are key points worth thinking about. >> i agree. thank you. mr. chairman. >> senator rounds, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. gentlemen, thank you for your willingness to appear before this committee to answer questions on the withdrawal from afghanistan. you've received and will continue to receive tough questions on what led to this decision. this is an important constitutional requirement of the jobs you have agreed to serve in and i thank you all for your many years of service to our nation. want to underline the fact that every single member of this committee regardless of party is grateful for the dedication and bravery exhibited by our service members especially those who gave their last full measure of devotion at abby gate. general mckenzie, general miller told this committee that he recommended keeping 2500 troops in afghanistan. this is back in january of 2021. because he felt that afghan forces would not hold out long without our support. seems to me there would have been a process to convey general miller's recommendation to the president. can you share the process and who conveyed general miller's recommendation and was that recommendation delivered to both president trump at the time and also to president biden? >> there is a process for delivering recommendations from commanders in the field. i was part of that process. while i have been very clear that i won't give you my recommendation i have given you my view i think you can draw your on conclusions from. my view is that 2500 was an appropriate number to remain. if we went below that number we would witness a collapse of the afghan government and the afghan military. so -- >> i guess my question is would it be fair for the committee to assume that both president trump and president biden received that specific information that had been assumed to be delivered by general miller? >> i believe it would be reasonable for the committee to assume that. >> and would general miller have been able to deliver that directly to the president or would someone else have had to have delivered that for him? >> i would leave it to general miller to express an opinion on that. we both had the opportunity to be in executive session with the president. i can't share anything beyond making that statement. >> thank you. secretary austin, this committee was briefed on the series of rehearsal concept drills that could arise. the worst case scenario, a collapse of the afghan government was not a factor the drills did. did we do tabletop exercises and went through the drills and we never assumed that there could be an immediate collapse of the afghan government? >> we planned for a range of possibilities. the entire collapse of the afghan government was clearly one of the things that if you look at the intel estimates and some of the estimates that others had made that could happen, but in terms of specific planning specially with respect to neowe planned for a contested environment or one that was uncontested. the requirement to evacuate a moderate amount of people versus a large amount of people. there was a range of possibilities that we addressed. >> but never with an immediate collapse of the government. >> we certainly did not plan against the collapse of a government in 11 days. >> thank you. general milley, i think senator cotton made a very good point with regard to the timing, the collapse of kabul and the timing which you were asked for your professional military opinion about the path forward. which seems to be a real challenge for many of us is that it appears that in your professional military opinion, it would have been prudent to have used a different approach than a date certain with regard to a withdrawal from afghanistan. and if that is correct, and if there were other alternatives presented to the president, i'm certain that the frustration you felt in not having your professional military advice followed closely by an incoming president, that you were then tasked in a very short period of time with handling what was a position in time for the people that were on the ground there to respond in an emergency basis. would it be fair to say that you changed from a long-term plan of gradual withdrawal based on conditions to one in which you had to make immediate changes based upon a date certain? >> senator, as a matter of professional advice i would advise any leader don't put date certains on end dates. makes things conditions based. two presidents in a row put dates on it. i don't think -- my advice is don't put specific dates. make things conditions-based. that's how i've been trained over many, many years. with respect, though, to the 31st, and the decision on the 25th. the risk to mission and the risk to force and most importantly the risk to the american citizens that are remaining, that was going to go up, not down, on the 1st of september and the american citizens. i know there are american citizens there. they would have been at greater risk had we stayed past the 31st in our professional opinion. >> thank you. >> senator cain, please. >> to the witnesses i want to return to a moint that senator wicker made. i informed a d.o.d. witness 10 days ago we would expect an answer to the question of how many americans are still in afghanistan. and that we would not appreciate an answer that that was deferred to state. i'm going to ask the question during my second round of questions after lunch and with the number of staff who are here in this room and in the ante room we ought to be able to get an answer. and if we can't it will suggest to the committee -- i don't think you want to suggest this to the committee -- that you don't want to be responsive to that question, or that you don't talk to the state department or that the number of americans in afghanistan is something that you indifferent to. i don't think any of those are true so i'll ask the question after lunch and hope we can get an answer. two compliments. first thanks to president biden for ending the u.s. combat mission in afghanistan after 20 years. it took guts and the right thing to do and it should have been done earlier. a virginia service member whose wife is expecting said this recently. i'm so glad my baby isn't being born into a country at war. i want us to stay on permanent war footing in afghanistan and elsewhere. some will suggest that troops are still carrying out limited military strikes around the world. the fam leels of those who have beemployed to iraq and afghanistan over the last 20 years, they are relieved that america is now turning the page and rejecting the notion that we should be a nation in permanent war. second, the effort to evacuate more than 120,000 people to safety under chaotic circumstances was remarkable. i visited the dallas expo center where 80% of the afghans and fort lee. the firtion of the eight forts that processed afghanistan and i visited afghans, troops and ngos. the competent and compassionate service on the american side and the deep gratitude among afghans made a deep impression on me. we should do all we can to make the transition to a safe life in america as productive as possible. my chief criticism and question why did the afghan security forces and government collapse so quickly and why do d the u.s. so overestimated their capacity. the second question is important, to any who have said we couldn't see this coming members of this committee know that's wrong and an immediate collapse may not have been the most likely outcome but we heard for years from the intel community that d.o.d. estimates of afghan strength was too optimistic. the u.s. government had a good evacuation plan premiseed on an afghan military and civilian government that showed high resistance to the taliban. we did not adequately plan for the possibility of a real kol ps. we need to explore processes to understand why we were unrealistic and how to correct that going forward. the most important part of the question is why military we trained for 20 years at a cost of 800 plus billion collapsed so quickly? i can think of three reasons after i put them on the table i would like each of you beginning with general mckenzie to address the question. we can do it when we come back after lunch. the collapse may show our training was insufficient and it did not prepare the afghan military to defend the country on their own. that should have been our goal. we failed to accomplish it. if so, how must we change our thinking about training foreign militaries? second, the lightning collapse may not prove were poor fighters be demoraleized. did they lack confidence in their own political and military leaders and demoralized the piece agreement. did it deepen a culture of corruption that long predated our involvement. the best fighting force may give in. the lightning collapse may show we wanted things for afghans that afghan leadership did not want for themselves. we celebrated gains in public health and women's education and assumed that afghans would fight to preserve those gains rather than allow the taliban to take over. in other words, we thought we knew what afghans wanted and what they feared and what they would fight for. it was our belief, those well intentioned, was it naive? we can't get one-third of americans to accept the results of a presidential election or take a vaccine. do we think we can -- i will ask you this question. why do you believe the afghan military and civilian government collapsed so quickly? with that i'll yield back, mr. chair. >> thank you very much. senator cain. senator ernst. >> gentlemen, thank you very much for being here today and unfortunately this morning's hearing is required due to the haphazard withdrawal from afghanistan. we want to thank the men and women in uniform that assisted the evacuation of those that were able to make it out and, of course, to those that have service -- given their service and sacrifice over the past two decades. the global war on terror. the loss of our service members and abandonment of americans and afghan allies was an unforced, disgraceful humiliation that didn't have to happen. the president put a cheap political victory, withdrawal timeline, timed to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and executed the vision for little regard for american lives or the real threats we face. i do appreciate your open, your honest and expert participation in communicating to this committee what went wrong. i think our american citizens are at a real crossroads where they're questioning the leadership from this president and this administration. president biden's blunders can't be erased but the united states must not account for them through a revamped counter terrorism strategy that recognizes the new-found momentum of terrorists and new threats emanating from the middle east in addition to rising challenges we see coming from china and russia. pretty high stakes. secretary austin, i would like to start with you. did president biden or any of his national security advisors express any military or diplomatic conditions for the american withdrawal from afghanistan beyond the looming date of 9/11? what were those military conditions or diplomatic conditions that were outlined to you? >> again, once the president went through a very deliberate decision making process and made his decision that -- to exit afghanistan, there were no additional conditions placed on it. >> can you tell me that he did take into consideration military or diplomatic conditions and what were those conditions that he was weighing as he was making those decisions? >> sure. one of the things that, you know, all of us wanted to see happen was for this conflict to end with a diplomatic solution. and so one of the things that we certainly wanted to see was progress being made in the doha negotiations and we did not see -- he did not see any progress being made and there was really not much of a bright future for that process. >> general milley had stated earlier that his recommendation is always as any military commander should do, should be conditions-based. and we have to be able to evaluate whether those conditions are achievable and if we can successfully complete those. very little consideration was given to diplomatic or military conditions. the diplomatic again going to conditions-based. the diplomatic end to it i think, general milley said the military mission would end on the 31st and transition to a diplomatic mission. but i don't understand how we fulfill a diplomatic mission after august 31st when there are no diplomats on the ground if afghanistan. they're gone. they have been evacuated. who do we hand that mission off to when there is nobody there to complete it? can you then say that the president directed you, secretary austin, to execute an unconditional withdrawal from afghanistan? unconditional. august 31st, done. >> once he made the decision to withdraw, that was the decision, to leave. and we certainly wanted to make sure that we shaped conditions so that our embassy could maintain a presence there and continue to engage the government of afghanistan. so protection of the embassy was pretty important. >> secretary austin you are extremely diplomatic in your answers. i can appreciate that. this was not a conditions-based withdrawal. and i think all three of you have stated that you made your best opinion known to the president of the united states. he had no conditions other than to get our people out of afghanistan, which he failed at because we still have americans as well as afghan partners in afghanistan. thank you, mr. chair. i yield back. >> senator king, please. >> i'm finding this a very interesting hearing. two hearings at once. one is on the question of shooud we leave afghanistan and if we shouldn't, what should be the nature of our commitment to the country and troops. the other is the withdrawal which i thought was the subject of the hearing. the decision to leave afghanistan was made by president trump and his administration on february 29, 2020. we committed to leave by a date certain. there was a particular provision or condition, if you will, about negotiations between the taliban and the afghan government. there was even a date specified march 10th, 2020, less than two weeks after the signing of the doha agreement. clearly that condition was not met. my question is and general milley you are the only one who overlapped the two administrations. were there efforts on behalf of the prior administration to enforce that condition of negotiation with the afghan government and the taliban? >> senator, as i said in my opening remarks, the conditions that were required of the taliban, none of them were met except one. >> my question is did we attempt to enforce those conditions and inform the taliban we won't advocate for the release of 5,000 prisoners unless you begin negotiations or something similar? >> i don't have personal knowledge of that, whether or not they were saying that. i don't have personal knowledge of that. none of the conditions were met except the one, don't attack american forces and coalition forces. that condition was met. >> the conditions were not met but you testified the troop withdrawals and release of the 5,000 taliban prisoners did proceed even though the conditions had not been met. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> you testified you provided your best military advice to president biden there should be a residual force left in afghanistan. did you provide the same advice to president trump when they were negotiating the doha agreement? >> again, i won't discuss precise advice. >> was it your best military judgment that a residual force -- >> yes, that's what that zeroes of memos and advice and meetings in the september and october time frame is what they were and -- >> your military judgment didn't change on january 20th. >> no. >> thank you. general mckenzie you touched on something. the only one to mention this in this entire hearing. one of the key moments was the fleeing of president ghani and that is, in fact, what really pulled the rug out from under the military and demoralized the entire government. that was really not the beginning of the end, the end of the end. do you have some thoughts on that? >> i have think when we consider what happened to the afghan military, you have to consider it linked completely linked to what happened to the afghan government. when your president flees on no notice in the middle of the day it has a debilitating effect. events were pretty far along on august 15th. i do note that. they could have fought aund held parts of kabul had the president stai.d it demoreized those members of combat. they were disorganized by that and led to the taliban pushing in as fast as they wanted to go into the center of the city. >> i do want to point out for the record that to my knowledge and memory, this committee never had a hearing on the decision to withdraw from afghanistan in february of 2020. and it now appears that would have been a beneficial hearing because we could have discussed all of these issues and -- but we were already on the path for withdrawal. and the withdrawal date under that agreement was may 1st of 2021. president biden extended that. i don't know whether it was a negotiation or some kind of understanding until the end of august. general milley, in questioning from senator cotton you talked about your military advice about leaving on august 31st versus staying to try to help additional americans leave. was it the unanimous recommendation of the joint chiefs that the august 31st date should be observed and if so, why was that the military advice? >> it was of the joint chiefs plus general mckenzie, adm