Former CENTCOM commander: “I advised against withdrawing” from Afghanistan

The former top general in the United States’ Middle Eastern theater reported on Sunday that he had warned President Joe Biden of the catastrophic results from pulling out of Afghanistan in August of last year. According to the former CENTCOM commander, the Pentagon communicated to the White House in no uncertain terms that a total withdrawal from Afghanistan would all but guarantee the Taliban’s return to power and the dissolution of the Afghan government.

The former chief of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie told “Fox News Sunday” that he believes that the United States had a good chance of keeping the Taliban subdued had the president maintained “a small contingent of American troops” in Afghanistan. He added that the Afghan government, backed by the United States, could have held onto power if Biden had not opted to withdraw completely.

Gen. McKenzie, who commanded CENTCOM during the Saigon-esque pull-out of Kabul said, “I advised against withdrawing, my recommendation and my opinion, and it remains so today, was we had the opportunity to remain in the country with a small force.”

This interview took place shortly before the one-year of the end of the longest war the US has ever fought.

McKenzie added, “We believe that Kabul would fall if we pull out our troops. It was just a question of when Kabul would fall and we have been saying that really since the fall of the year.”

EDITOR’S NOTE:

The General was probably right. We, as a nation, likely could have staved off the Taliban indefinitely. Our military certainly had the resources, the intelligence, and the resolve to suppress the Taliban for as long as we felt inclined to do so. But was that ever our job?

In Joe Biden’s initial address over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, he said:

“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.”

That being the case, why on Earth would we have stayed? Why would we leave a contingency of US troops behind to absorb an inevitable barrage of Taliban attacks while Afghan Soldiers and Police continued to sell equipment, clothing, and fuel to the Taliban rather than fight them?

Was the withdrawal mismanaged? It certainly appears to have been. Was it an embarrassment to our nations executive and military leaders? Without a doubt. But it was also long overdue. And extending out presence in Afghanistan for even one more day to keep the nation’s former government from reassuming power on behalf of a people with no interest in having a national identity or a diplomatically run government, would not have prevented any great tragedy… it would only delay it.

Yes, we could have stayed and kept the Taliban at bay. But they could have and would have waited us out for as long as they had to — just as they had done against every occupying force that has ever had the misfortune of taking arms against the indigenous people of the region.