During portions of an interview with NBC released on Wednesday, former CENTCOM Commander Gen. Frank McKenzie (Ret.), who helped oversee the evacuation of Afghanistan, stated that he wishes the United States had begun to evacuate people earlier, and he believes that the events in August of 2021 were set in motion “when we decided to leave completely in April of that year. And once you make that basic decision, then events took on a certain trajectory.” And that this decision was “not a military decision. That’s a political decision.”
McKenzie said, “I wish we had begun to bring people out earlier. You always go back and you examine that. I wish we had seen that coming. I wish we had done that different[ly]. There [are] all kinds of things that I would do differently. But I would tell you, I believe that what happened in August of last year occurred when we decided to leave completely in April of that year. And once you make that basic decision, then events took on a certain trajectory.”
He also stated of the decision to withdraw completely in April, “That’s not a military decision. That’s a political decision.”
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