0 why wasn't action taken to secure the kabul airport or retake bagram then? >> thank you, senator. you're right, the tempo had picked up significantly, yet the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie routinely engaged the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops and further stiffen their defenses, to no avail. to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. >> i don't mean to interrupt you, but my time is lapsing. this gets to the overestimation, i think the overly optimistic assessment, because even as late as july you're still encouraging the afghan special forces, you're expecting the ghani government to remain. in december of 2019, the "washington post" reported that the u.s. military commanders privately expressed a lack of confidence that the afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the taliban on their own. general milley, you noted there was some specific military lessons to be learned. this is not the first time that i think we have relied upon overly optimistic assessments of conditions on the ground or conflict conditions. certainly happened in vietnam. so my question to you is what specific steps can we take to make sure that our assessments are not overly optimistic so we can avoid the kind of reliance on assessments that are not accurate? >> i think in the case of working with other countries' armies, it's important to have advisors with those units so you can do a wholistic assessment. it's very difficult to measure. this is very important, a lesson from vietnam and today. we learned in el salvador or colombia where we did assist and helped other countries' armies fight insurgencies and were quite effective, but it was their country, their army that bore the burden of all the fighting and we had very, very few advisors and it was quite effective. every country is different, every war is different, but i think those are some key points wort thinking about. >> thank you for your willingness to appear before this committee to answer questions on the withdrawal from afghanistan. you continued and will continue to receive tough questions on what led to this decision. this is an important constitutional requirement of the jobs you have agreed to serve in. i thank you all for your many years of service to our nation. i want to underline the fact that every single member of this committee, regardless of party, is grateful for the dedication and bravery exhibited by our service members, especially those who gave their last full measure of devotion at abbey gate. general miller told this committee that he recommended keeping 2500 troops in afghanistan. this was back in january of 2021. he felt that afghan forces would not hold up long without our support. seems to me there would have been a process to convey general miller's recommendation to the president. can you share the process and who conveyed general miller's recommendation? and was that recommendation delivered to both president trump at the time and also to president biden? >> there is a process for delivering recommendations from commanders in the field. i was part of that process. while i have been very clear that i won't give you my recommendation, i've given you my view that 2500 was an appropriate number to remain and if we went below that number, in fact, we would probably witness a collapse of the afghan government and afghan military. >> i guess my question is would it be fair for the committee to assume that both president trump and president biden received that specific information that had been assumed to be delivered by general miller? >> i believe it would be reasonable for the committee to assume that. >> and would general miller have been able to deliver that directly to the president or would someone else had to have delivered that for him? >> i would leave it to general miller to express an opinion on that, but he and i both had the opportunity to be in executive session with the president. i can't share anything beyond making that statement. >> thank you. secretary austin, this committee was briefed on the series of rehearsal concept drills that examined the many potential scenarios that arise to the different actions and counter actions. multiple leaders say the worst case scenario, the collapse of the afghan government, was not considered as a possibility. is it true that we went through these drills and never assumed there could be an immediate collapse of the afghan government? >> we planned for a range of possibilities. the entire collapse of the afghan government was clearly one of the things that if you look at the intel estimates and some of the estimates that others have made that could happen. but in terms of specific planning we planned for a contested environment ohr an uncontested environment. the requirement to evacuate a moderate amount of people versus a large amount of people. there was a range of possibilities that we addressed. >> but never with immediate collapse of the government? >> we certainly did not plan against the collapse of a government in 11 days. >> thank you. general milley, i think senator cotton made a very good point with regard to the timing, the collapse of kabul and the timing which you were asked for your professional military opinion about the path forward. it appears that in your professional military opinion it would have been prudent to have used a different approach than a date certain with regard to a withdrawal from afghanistan. if that is correct and if there were other alternatives presented to the president, i'm certain that the frustration that you felt in not having your professional military advice followed closely by an incoming president, that you were then tasked in a very short period of time with handling what was a position in time for the people that were on the ground there to respond in an emergency basis. would it be fair to say that you changed from a long-term plan of gradual withdrawal based on conditions to one in which you had to make immediate changes based upon a date certain? >> senator, as a matter of professional advice, you would advise any leader don't put dates certain on end dates. make things conditions based. two presidents in a row put dates on it. i don't think that's -- my advice is don't put specific dates. make things conditions based. that is how i've been trained over many, many years. with respect, though, to the 31st and the decision on the 25th, the risk to mission and the risk to force and, most importantly, the risk to american citizens that are remaining, that was going to go up, not down on the 1st of september. i know there's american citizens there, but they would have been at greater risk had we stayed past the 31st, in our professional opinion. >> thank you. >> senator kaine. >> i want to return to a point that senator wicker made. i'm going to ask the question during my second round of questions after lunch and with the number of staff here in this room we ought to be able to get an answer. if we can't, it will suggest to the committee -- and i don't think you want to suggest this to the committee -- that you don't want to be responsive to that question or that you don't talk to the state department or that the number of americans in afghanistan is something that you're indifferent to. i don't think any of those are true so i'll ask the question again after lunch and i hope we can get an answer. two compliments and then a critical inquiry. first, thanks to president biden for ending the mission in afghanistan after 20 years. it took guts and it was the right thing to do and it should have been done earlier. a virginia service member's wife said to me recently, i'm so glad that my baby is not going to be born at war. u.s. troops are still deployed, still in harm's way, but to the families of those who have been deployed over and over again into iraq and afghanistan over the course of the last 20 years, they are relieved that america is turning the page and rejecting the notion we should be a nation at permanent war. second, the effort to evacuate 120,000 people to safety under chaotic circumstances was remarkable. i visited dulles, the principal arrival point for afghans. i also visited fort lee and i visited with afghans, our troops, the many federal agencies working together and ngos. the competent and compassionate service made a deep impression on me. we should do all we can to make a transition to safe life in america. why did the afghan government collapse so quickly and why did the u.s. government overestimate their capacity? to any who have said we couldn't see this coming, the members of this committee know that's wrong. an immediate collapse may not have been the most likely outcome, but we have heard that d.o.d. estimates of afghan strength were way too optimistic. i believe the u.s. government had a good evacuation plan, but it was premised on a government that showed high resistance to the taliban. so we did not adequately prepare for the possibility of a quick collapse. we need to explore military and interagency decision making processes to understand why we were unrealistic and how to correct that going forward. the most important part of the question is why a military that we trained for 20 years at a cost of $800 billion collapsed so quickly. i would like you to address the question. if you can't, we can do it after lunch. first the lightning collapse may show that our training was insufficient and that it did not prepare the afghan military to defend the country on their own. that should have been our goal, but we failed to accomplish it. if so, how must we change our thinking about training foreign militaries. second, the lightning collapse may not prove that they were poor fighters but that they were demoralized. did they lack confidence in their own political and military leaders? were they demoralized by a 2020 peace agreement between the u.s. and the taliban that didn't even include the afghan government. did u.s. and allied funding deepen a culture of corruption that long predated our involvement. we celebrated gains in public health and women's education and we assumed afghans would fight to preserve those gains rather than allow the taliban to take over. in other words, we thought we knew what afghans wanted. was our belief incredibly naive? we can't get one-third of americans to take the covid vaccine or accept the results of a presidential election. do we really think we can transform the culture of another nation? to each of our witnesses when we return in the second round, i will ask you this question. why do you believe the afghan military and civilian government collapsed so quickly? with that, i'll yield back. >> thank you, mr. chair. gentlemen, thank you very much for being here today. unfortunately this morning's hearing is required due to the haphazard withdrawal. to those that have given their service and sacrifice over the past two decades of the global war on terror. the loss of our service members and abandonment of allies last month was an unforced disgraceful humiliation that didn't have to happen. the president put a cheap political victory, a withdrawal timeline tied to the 20th anniversary of 911 on his calendar. i do appreciate your open, your honest and expert participation in communicating to this committee what went wrong. i think our american citizens are at a real cross roads right now where they are questioning the leadership from this president and this administration. president biden's blunders can't be erased but the united states must now account for them through a revamped counter terrorism strategy that recognizes the newfound momentum of terrorists and new threats emanating from the middle east in addition to rising challenges that we see coming from china and russia. pretty high stakes. secretary austin, i'd like to start with you. did president biden or any of his national security advisors express any military or diplomatic conditions for the american withdrawal from afghanistan beyond the looming date of 9/11? what were those conditions outlined to you? >> again, once the president went through a very deliberate decision making process and made his decision to exit afghanistan, there were no additional conditions placed on it. >> can you tell me that he did take into consideration military or diplomatic conditions? and what were those conditions he was weighing as he was making those decisions? >> sure. one of the things that all of us wanted to see happen was for this conflict to end with a diplomatic solution. and so one of the things we serm certainly wanted to see was progress being made in the doha negotiations. he did not see any progress being made and there was really not much of a bright future for that process. >> so general milley had stated earlier that his recommendation is always, as any military commander should do, should be conditions based. and we have to be able to evaluate whether those conditions are achievable and if we can successfully complete those. it sounds like there were very little or very little consideration given to diplomatic or military conditions. the diplomatic, again, going to conditions based, the diplomatic end to it, i think general milley, you always said that the military mission would end on the 31st and transition to a diplomatic mission. but i don't understand how we fulfill a diplomatic mission after august 31st when there are absolutely no diplomats on the ground in afghanistan. they're gone. they've been evacuated. who do we hand that mission off to when there is nobody there to complete it? can you then say that the president directed you, secretary austin, to execute an unconditional withdrawal from afghanistan? unconditional, august 31st, done. >> once we made the decision to withdraw, that was the decision, to leave. we certainly wanted to make sure that we shaped conditions so that our embassy could maintain a presence there and continue to engage the government of afghanistan. protection for the embassy was pretty important. >> secretary austin, you are extremely diplomatic in your answers. i can appreciate that. but this was not a conditions based withdrawal. i think all three of you have stated that you made your best opinion known to the president of the united states. he had no conditions other than to get our people out of afghanistan, which he failed at because we still have americans as well as afghan partners in afghanistan. thank you, mr. chair. i yield back. >> senator king, please. >> i'm finding this a very interesting hearing. it's really two hearings at once. one is on the question of if we should leave afghanistan and if we shouldn't, what should be our commitment to the country. the other is the withdrawal, which i thought was the subject of the hearing. the decision to leave afghanistan was made by president trump and his administration on february 29th, 2020, where we committed to leave by a date certain. there was a particular provision or condition, if you will, about negative sha shats between the taliban and the afghan government. there was each a date specified, march 10th, 2020, less than two weeks after the signing of the doha agreement. clearly that condition was not met. my question is were there any efforts on behalf of the prior administration to enforce that condition of negotiation with the afghan government and the taliban? >> senator, as i said in my opening remarks, the conditions that were required of the taliban, none of them were met except one. >> my question is, did we attempt to enforce those conditions? did we inform the taliban, for example, we won't advocate for the release of 5,000 prisoners unless you begin negotiations, or something similar? >> i don't have personal knowledge of that, whether or not. but i do know that none of the conditions were met except the one, which is don't attack american forces and coalition forces. >> the conditions were not met, but you testified that the troop withdrawals and the release of the 5,000 taliban prisoners did proceed even though the conditions had not been met, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> you testified you provided your best military advice to president biden that there should be a residual force left in afghanistan. did you provide the same advice to president trump? >> again, i'm not going to discuss advice. that's what a series of memos and advice in the september/october time frame, that's exactly what they were. you can talk to secretary esper. he can tell you the same thing. >> so your military judgment didn't change on january 20th? >> no. >> thank you. general mckenzie you were the only one to mention it in the entire hearing. in my judgment, one of the key moments was the fleeing of president ghani and that was what really pulled the rug out from the military and demoralized the entire government. that was not the beginning of the end, the end of the end. do you have some thoughts on that? >> i think when we consider what happened to the afghan military, you have to consider completely linked to what happened to the afghan government. when your president flees literally on no notice in the middle of the days that has a profoundly debilitating effect on everything else. events were pretty far along on 15 august. i do believe it is possible could they have fought had the president stayed. there was still considerable afghan formations around kabul. >> i do want to point out to my knowledge and memory this committee never had a hearing on the decision to withdraw from afghanistan in february of 2020. it now appears that would have been a beneficial hearing because we could have discussed all of these issues, but we were already on the path for withdrawal. the withdrawal date under that agreement was may 1st of 2021. president biden extended that. i don't know whether it was a negotiation or some kind of understanding until the end of august. general milley, you talked about your military advice about leaving on august 31st versus staying to try to help additional americans leave. was it the unanimous recommendation of the joint chiefs that the august 31st date should be observed? if so, why was that the military advice? >> it was of the joints chief plus general mckenzie, general donahue. the reason is risk to force, risk to mission and risk to americans. after that we were going to go to war with the taliban. of that there was no doubt. we were already in conflict with isis. at that point in time if we stayed past the 31st, which militarily is feasible, but it would have been required an additional commitment of significant amounts of force, maybe 25,000 troops. that's what would have happened beginning on the 1st. that would have resulted in significant casualties on the u.s. side and it would have placed american citizens that are still there at greater risk in my professional view and the view of all the other generals. so on the 25th we recommended that we transition to a diplomatic option beginning on the 31st. >> you said that the taliban have not lived up to the terms of the agreement. give me a rough date when they first breached the terms of the agreement where you said they were not living up to the terms of the doha agreement? what was the first evidence they were not living up to the terms of the agreement? >> the memo signed 29 february. through the fighting season of the summer of 2020 one of their requirements, for example -- >> so more than a year ago? >> absolutely, sure. >> i don't buy the idea that this president was bound by a decision made by a prior president. this was not a treaty. it was clearly an a