Are the generals undercutting Biden like they undercut Trump?

Mark Milley.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

President Biden and top military officials are telling different stories about their planning process to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

"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," Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said much the same thing: His view "back in the fall of 2020, [which] remained consistent throughout, [was] that we should keep a steady state of 2,500 and it could bounce up to 3,500, maybe, something like that, in order to move toward a negotiated solution."

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.