Revealed: Mark Milley was given paper calling for 'complete US withdrawal' from Afghanistan

When the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan in August 2021, many pro-Donald Trump Republicans were quick to blame the Biden Administration — often failing to mention that President Joe Biden was essentially following the plan for withdrawal that had been agreed upon when Trump was in office.

Shortly after former President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in November 2020, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was given a piece of paper that called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Somalia and Afghanistan.

Milley, who has since retired as a general in the Army, told lawmakers that he received the note days after Trump fired then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in the aftermath of the election. The piece of paper, he told lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, had the president’s signature on it and called for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia by Dec. 15, 2020, and from Afghanistan by Jan. 15, 2021.

“Acting Secretary of Defense [Christopher] Miller and I and others went over to the White House to confirm that order because we had not been consulted on that,” Milley explained. “So we did, and that order was then subsequently rescinded.”

Roughly a week later, he received a new order from then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien, which called for the U.S. military to reduce its troop presence to 2,500.

News of the note emerged last November via a book by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, who reported that it was not in fact written by Trump but by John McEntee, who was serving as director of the Presidential Personnel Office. Milley did not reveal in his testimony who gave him the note or who wrote it.

Milley and retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers on the committee that the State Department was too slow in initiating a noncombatant evacuation operation. The State Department did not initiate the evacuation until the day before the Taliban overtook Kabul, about two weeks before the military’s impending withdrawal.

The number of Afghans who wanted to depart the country skyrocketed with the collapse of the government because the Taliban’s resurgence meant those who worked with the U.S. were now concerned about reprisals. The U.S. military was able to evacuate roughly 120,000 people in the last two weeks of August, but thousands of Afghan allies were left behind.

Milley said the State Department’s delayed call for the evacuation was “the fundamental mistake.”

These evacuations were marred by the Abbey Gate bombing on Aug. 26, 2021, which claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians. Dozens of U.S. troops were injured in the blast.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating the conclusion of the U.S.’s war in Afghanistan. Milley and McKenzie’s appearance in front of the committee marked their first times testifying on Capitol Hill since their retirements.