General Frank McKenzie slams Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and says it will be viewed as a mistake from the beginning

A former top general in the United States Marine Corps teared up President Joe Biden‘s disastrous plan to withdraw from the war Afghanistan – a country that, according to the former military leader, would be considered a mistake by history.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, who retired in April 2022, was the head of U.S. Central Command during the withdrawal, including the suicide bombing that killed 13 service members at Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021.

In an interview on Sunday, he said he feels the withdrawal – which attracted widespread criticism and which he had previously defended – will be seen as a terrible mistake from planning to implementation.

“I believe that history will regard the decision to leave Afghanistan in the way we did and the way we were told to get out as a fatal flaw,” he said.

McKenzie said in March 2022 that he would regret the withdrawal for the rest of his life — a decision that allowed the Taliban to quickly take control of Afghanistan as Americans and refugees fled for safety.

‘I deeply regret the way things ended in Afghanistan. “I regret the basic decision, which I think was the wrong decision,” he said Fox news.

“And I especially regret that we did not choose to evacuate our people, our embassy staff, our American citizens and our Afghans who are at risk at the time we made the decision to deploy our combat troops. I think that was a serious mistake, and I think it led directly to the events of August 2021.”

McKenzie has previously said he was proud of the way American troops evacuated 124,000 people from Kabul, but he was and will forever be haunted by the suicide bombing that killed 13 American soldiers and more than 100 Afghans.

“We were dealing with the possibility of a suicide vest attack, but with no specific description of the individual,” McKenzie, who served under Biden and Trump, said of the attack.

“We were dealing with the possibility of an indirect fire attack, either with rockets or mortars, but I do know that there was no information to support the claim that we knew what the bomber looked like, he was carrying a backpack with three yellow stripes. he added.

‘That just wasn’t there. We just didn’t have that intelligence.’

He was honest when asked what he might have changed about the repeal.

“When you lose people you always look back and wonder if you could have done things differently, and that haunts me. I think about it quite a bit. It’s one of the many regrets I have. I examined everything we did. I think about it mainly in August of every year for the rest of my life.’

One of McKenzie’s successes was the high-profile raid to kill or capture ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, but he also described how he thinks every day about the troops killed in Kabul.

He initially spoke about it when he gave his final press conference in March 2018.

“The collapse of the Afghan government was not the outcome we wanted when we began our withdrawal,” he said.

“That said, the courage and hard work of several thousand military personnel under difficult and dangerous conditions, making possible the evacuation of 124,000 U.S. partners and Afghan nationals, is something the country can be very proud of.

“It came at the terrible cost of thirteen U.S. service members and the deaths of more than a hundred Afghan civilians.

‘And that is a loss that I deeply regret. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

‘We owe these heroes our gratitude.’

They were killed when a suicide bomber detonated explosives near a US checkpoint at Kabul airport in the final, desperate days of the withdrawal.

Thousands of Afghans tried to flee to safety, and US Marines checked them in one by one when the explosion occurred.

The local offshoot of the Islamic State – known as ISIS-K – claimed responsibility.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about last August and the loss of our 11 Marines, a soldier and a sailor there,” McKenzie said.

‘I think about it a lot. You go back and always try to find ways you could have done differently.”

But he said the battlefield was a dynamic place.

“We have not been able to stop this attack,” he said.

“I don’t know what we could have done to pull off this particular attack,” he said.

‘For those for the family members who have lost a child or loved one there. My heart breaks for them and I feel their pain.”

He has led American troops in the Middle East and Southwest Asia for the past three years. And last year he took over responsibility for the mission in Afghanistan as the US was winding down its presence.

He hinted at some of the darkest moments during his final remarks to reporters.

“And there have been days, I can tell you, when I would rather have my leg removed below the knee, and then come in and talk to you guys,” he said via video link.

“But it was important to do.”

He took the opportunity to provide an assessment of the region under his command, and to describe the threats to the US

“Continue to view Iran as the greatest threat to regional security and stability,” he said.

“They provide weapons, support and leadership to proxies across the region that engage in acts of terror and undermine local governments, all of which further Iranian interests.

“Iran’s ballistic missile threat has continued to grow and expand with greater range and accuracy. CENTCOM has continued to monitor Iran and its allies as we act as a deterrent to Iranian attacks on U.S. interests.

These attacks, and the threat to U.S. interests, were on display last weekend when the rockets struck a U.S. military base and an office of a Kurdish news channel in Erbil, northern Iraq.

Iran later claimed responsibility, saying it carried out the attack in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two Revolutionary Guard members last week.

No one was injured in the attack on Erbil.