Mark Milley, the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded on Monday to a social media post written by former President Donald Trump accusing him of committing treason by saying President Trump has the right to say whatever he wants.
Mr. Milley, who is now retired, was questioned by a Democrat lawmaker about the former president’s Truth Social post during a hearing on the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. In a September 2023 post, President Trump wrote that Mr. Milley’s communications with a Chinese general during his final months in office amount to a “treasonous act” and that in the past, “the punishment would have been death.”
“I don’t agree with the comments, but it’s a free country, and people can say what they want. With all due respect, guys, I’m here for the families of Abbey Gate,” the retired general said, referring to the 13 soldiers who were killed during the largely criticized U.S. withdrawal. “I’m here for the families of those that served in Afghanistan.”
“And I’ll leave those comments—as much as I don’t care for those comments, don’t agree with them—they have a right to say them,” Mr. Milley continued to say about the former president’s remark. “But I’d like to stay focused on these families.”
Mr. Milley made two calls to the top Chinese general, Li Zuocheng, as revealed in a book written by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in 2021. According to the book, he told the general after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach that the United States is “100 percent steady.”
Since the former president left the White House in 2021, he has been largely critical of Mr. Milley and has said he was too left-wing to be a general.
Afghanistan Comments
But the bulk of Monday’s hearing with Mr. Milley and U.S. Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie dealt with the Afghanistan withdrawal, which was largely criticized by the mainstream media as a failure. As the U.S. announced plans to pull out, the Taliban made swift advances across the country, easily overwhelming the U.S.-trained Afghan army under former Prime Minister Ashraf Ghani.As the Taliban took over Kabul, the capital, chaotic scenes unfolded near the airport. In one instance some Afghan nationals attempted to grab onto a departing U.S. military plane before falling to their deaths.
Thousands of panicked Afghans and U.S. citizens desperately tried to get on U.S. military flights that were airlifting people out. In the end, the military was able to transport more than 130,000 civilians before the final U.S. military aircraft departed. Thirteen U.S. service members were also killed by a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in the final days of the war.
Mr. Milley and Mr. McKenzie both faulted the timing of a decision by the U.S. State Department, saying that it came too late to evacuate. “The fundamental mistake, the fundamental flaw was the timing of the State Department,” he said. “That was too slow and too late.”
In a lengthy statement late Tuesday, the Biden National Security Council took issue with the generals’ remarks, saying that Biden’s hard decision was the right thing to do and part of his commitment to get the United States out of America’s longest war.
In the hearing, which was prompted by a lengthy investigation by the House Foreign Affairs Committee into the decisions surrounding the evacuation of Kabul, Mr. McKenzie spoke at length about his discomfort with how little seemed to be ready for an evacuation, even raising those concerns with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Evacuation orders must come from the State Department, but in the weeks and months before Kabul fell to the Taliban, the Pentagon was still pressing the State Department for evacuation plans, he added.
“We had forces in the region as early as 9 July, but we could do nothing” without evacuation orders, Mr. McKenzie said, calling the State Department’s timing “the fatal flaw that created what happened in August.”
The evacuation and Taliban advance in August 2021 were triggered by delaying the evacuation by several months, he said, adding that it was only issued when the “Taliban had overrun the country.”
