In an ABC interview last month, President Biden defended the chaotic US exit from Afghanistan, denying that advisers had wanted him to keep 2,500 troops in the country. He was contradicted by top military officials during a heated six-hour Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, the Hill reports. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of Central Command, said they had agreed with an assessment that 2,500 troops would be needed to prevent the collapse of the Afghan government, though they declined to say what they had directly told Biden. More:
- Warnings of collapse. McKenzie said he recommended keeping troops in the country under both the Biden and Trump administrations. "I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and I also recommended early in the fall of 2020 that we maintain 4,500 at that time, those were my personal views,” McKenzie said, per the AP. "I also had a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.”