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Former President Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Gen. Mark Milley on Monday, ending a presidency marred by a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Milley accepted the pardon, saying in a statement that he does not want to spend the rest of his life fighting “revenge.”
But critics of the withdrawal in Congress say they are not done with him.
“Mark Milley could be pardoned, but we will continue to explore ways to hold him accountable,” said Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a Veteran of Afghanistan.
Post-withdrawal assessments largely question why the military withdrew from the region before civilian evacuations were completed.
Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has admitted that the withdrawal in which 13 US soldiers lost their lives was a “strategic failure”.
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Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Mark Milley. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, file)
During a 2024 Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Milley blamed the State Department for delaying noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs), or an order to remove American civilians working in the country, but he praise the actions of the army.
That order didn’t come until mid-August 2021, just two weeks before Biden’s deadline to leave the country.
“I think it was too slow and too late. And that led to a series of events that resulted in the last couple of days. There are a lot of other mistakes that (were) made along the way… (but) I think that was the key.”
“The U.S. military is responsible for supporting the State Department in a noncombatant evacuation operation, however, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from a theater of combat in connection with an act of war it’s the responsibility of the Department of Defense, and at the end of the day, we didn’t leave a residual force,” Alex Pritsas, a former counterterrorism official at the Department of Defense, told Fox News Digital.
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Hundreds of people gather near a US Air Force C-17 transport plane on a perimeter at Kabul International Airport, Afghanistan, on August 17, 2021. (AP)
Biden also pardoned Anthony Fauci and members of the Jan. 6 Committee. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Milley said in congressional testimony in June 2021 that the US would not see scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saigon in Vietnam, where US personnel were being airlifted from rooftops.
“I don’t see Saigon 1975 in Afghanistan. The Taliban are simply not the North Vietnamese army.”
Milley’s pardon was part of a group of preemptive pardons that included Anthony Fauci and members of the January 6 Committee.
“My family and I are deeply grateful for the president’s action today,” Milley said in reaction to the pardon.
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He continued: “After 43 years of faithful service in uniform to our nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not want to spend the time the Lord gives me fighting those who might unjustly demand retribution for perceived wrongs. I don’t I do. I want to put my family, my friends, and those I served with through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.”
Jerry Dunleavy, former lead investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Afghanistan investigation, told Fox News Digital about the pardon: “Milley wrongly rejected the obviously correct comparison between the fall of Saigon and the imminent fall of Kabul, the massively inflated size of Afghan forces, woefully underestimated the speed and extent of Taliban control of the district, and then pushed the fiction that Afghanistan fell in just 11 days.
“After a disaster in which 13 soldiers were killed at Abbey Gate and the Taliban regained power, Milley wrongly predicted that Ukraine would fall to the Russians in just three days,” he added, referring to the remarks which Milley did.a closed-door briefing with lawmakers.
