General Don Bolduc, an Afghan vet and a Senate candidate, criticizes testimony by General Milley and others, but believes that they advised Biden to leave troops.
In an interview with WGIR’s Chris Ryan, Brigadier General Don Bolduc, who is a decorated Afghan War veteran and a candidate for Maggie Hassan’s Senate seat, has a negative opinion of the testimony of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of the Central Command, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley to the Senate Armed Services Committee; assesses how the evacuation plan for Afghanistan was doomed to failure; evaluates the recommendation by Biden’s military advisors to have 2,500 US troops remain for the evacuation; believes that Biden was advised to leave troops in Afghanistan; and criticizes advisors for not coming back with an alternate plan.
General Bolduc enlisted in the US Army at age eighteen and rose through the ranks to Brigadier General. After 36 years of service, including 10 tours of duty in Afghanistan, five Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts, Don Bolduc retired in 2017. General Bolduc has degrees in criminal justice, sociology, strategic studies, and business technology.
On the whole, General Bolduc is very disappointed by the testimony and demeanor of Austin, McKenzie, and Milley. Instead of an apology for their mistakes, Bolduc feels that these three military advisors to the President tried to justify their actions, engaged in finger pointing, blaming, and deflecting.
General Bolduc went on to describe the following effects of our withdrawal from Afghanistan: America’s credibility among the nations of the world is badly damaged; the Taliban is now better armed than 156 countries in the world; our service members were unnecessarily and negligently endangered; American citizens and our allies were left at the mercy of our enemies; and when they knew that their plan was failing, they just reinforced failure.
Drawing on his experiences when he was in charge of evacuations in Libya and South Sudan for the United States Africa Command, General Bolduc believes that the evacuation plan for Afghanistan was a total failure from a policy standpoint, the strategy development, operational approach, and tactics up and down the chain of command. The essential error was in not recognizing that this was a hostile environment to evacuate civilians.
General Bolduc feels that 2,500 troops would not be an adequate force to prop up the Afghan government and army or evacuate American citizens and allies. He believes that a force of that size could be used for counter terrorism attacks on high value targets.
Having attended high level, presidential briefings, General Bolduc is certain that Generals Milley and McKenzie and Secretary Austin did recommend to President Biden that 2,500 troops remain in Afghanistan. President Biden may have decided to not follow their advice then or after the meeting.
Once problems were developing, General Bolduc feels that the military advisors were obligated to come up with a plan to rectify the problem.
“Did they do that? No, and not at any time, and that’s the political nature of them, and that’s the biggest mistake that they made.”