Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters less than four weeks before the Taliban entered Kabul that the local military was fully capable of defending Afghanistan from the insurgent Islamic terrorist militia.
In a press conference on July 21, Milley said:
General Miller and his team, along with CENTCOM and many others in the joint force, have paved the path for a safe, orderly and responsible transition.
…
The Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country, and we will continue to support the Afghan Security Forces where necessary in accordance with the guidance from the president and the secretary of defense.
The future of Afghanistan is squarely in the hands of the Afghan people, and there are a range of possible outcome in Afghanistan. And I want to emphasis repeatedly, and I’ve said this before, a negative outcome, a Taliban automatic military takeover, is not a forgone conclusion. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and make adjustments as necessary.
Milley has become notorious recently for his obeisance to the political left. Last June, he apologized for accompanying President Donald Trump on a walk through Lafayette Square, as officials struggled to restore order to the nation’s capital.
In June, Milley defended the use of Critical Race Theory materials in a suggested reading list for members of the U.S. Navy, saying that such materials may be necessary to understand the “white rage” that he believed motivated the Capitol riot. In July, he dodged questions about a report that he had warned that President Trump might stage a “coup” after the election.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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