Top generals who oversaw US withdrawal from Afghanistan slam State Department for delaying emergency evacuation

The two senior generals in charge of the US military during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 both blamed the State Department for not sooner ordering a “noncombatant evacuation operation” for remaining US citizens in Afghanistan in a Congressional hearing on Tuesday.

The two senior generals in charge of the US military during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 both blamed the State Department for not sooner ordering a “noncombatant evacuation operation” for remaining US citizens in Afghanistan in a congressional hearing on Tuesday. The two senior generals in charge of the US military during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 both blamed the State Department for not sooner ordering a “noncombatant evacuation operation” for remaining US citizens in Afghanistan in a congressional hearing on Tuesday. “It is my assessment that that decision came too late,” retired Gen. Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs chairman, said at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. Retired Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, former commander of US Central Command, said that “the events of mid- and late August 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the NEO (evacuation) for several months, in fact, until we were in extremis, and the Taliban had overrun the country.” Milley said the consensus military recommendation to the Biden administration was to evacuate US Embassy personnel from Kabul at the same time as the military forces were withdrawing. “After the decisions were made to keep a diplomatic presence there, as the situation deteriorated through the summer and the fall in the provincial capitals, etc., we were clearly pressing for early calls to execute a NEO,” said Milley.