The House Foreign Affairs Committee recently held a hearing with Generals Mark Milley (Ret.) and Kenneth McKenzie (Ret.) on the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal of August 2021 which saw 13 American service members killed via suicide bomb at Abbey Gate. Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL), who sat on the hearing, appeared on Fox News's Hannity to discuss afterward, accusing the Biden Administration of "living in this fantasy land" as they attempted to plan the withdrawal.
As Gen. McKenzie noted during the hearing, the plan to evacuate non-combat personnel was effectively decided at the last minute, and the State Department was moving slower to coordinate the non-combatant evacuation (NEO) than the Department of Defense. Gen. Milley agreed there could have been more to prevent the tragedy, such as leaving a small force of soldiers behind to facilitate a smoother transition.
Rep. Waltz said the generals "were not pulling their punches when it came to the State Department led by [Secretary Antony] Blinken or the lack of leadership in this White House." Additionally, President Biden supposedly ignored the advice of three four-star generals to "do as President Trump did, which was to leave the base and leave some special operators to keep a lid on terrorism."
Moreover, Rep. Waltz said the military had a clear plan of evacuation in mind, yet "Biden and the State Department were living in this fantasy land that you had the 'good' terrorists, the Taliban, that they could work with."
As a result, he continued, 13 American service members are dead, while America's adversaries around the world are emboldened "because our allies were abandoned, and the entire world got the message that America was incompetent and in decline."
Waltz suggested this was a grim reality to accept, specifically as eleven American embassies have been evacuated in the past three years, and Haiti, with the unrest rocking the country, is the most recent.
"Big difference between responsibility and accountability. People are still taking responsibility, zero accountability. Zero, none," Waltz concluded.
Fellow Florida Republican and combat veteran Cory Mills (R-FL) made similar remarks in August with the Gold Star families of the 13 killed in Afghanistan, who said that despite the Biden Administration's promises of accountability and transparency, "not a single person having resigned, having been transparent, having been held accountable even though we know that there was a willful dereliction of duty."
