Former NATO Supreme Commander and Retired Army General Wesley Clark told Newsmax on Friday the Biden administration's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago was reminiscent of the collapse of Vietnam in 1975.
During an appearance on "American Agenda," Clark called the withdrawal "unfortunate" and "not well planned."
He said, "starting with the agreement in February of 2020 with the Taliban, it was just, it was just unfortunate. It wasn't well done. It wasn't well planned. And our government was internally torn because we in the military kept saying, 'you know, you need to keep people there.' "
Clark suggested the seeds of the withdrawal were sown during the Trump administration, saying, "There was an agreement to keep 8,000 [troops] and that was cut. There was 4,000. That was cut the last couple of weeks of the Trump administration, to 2,500, which was hardly enough to do much."
Clark said the millions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons the Taliban showed off during recent celebrations of the withdrawal weren't all left by U.S. forces.
"A lot of them were seized from the Afghan military," Clark said. "We cut off support for the Afghan military. We couldn't attack the Taliban and defend the Afghan military. Even when we had forces there to do it. That was the agreement.
"So it was open season on the Afghan military for the last eight or 10 months there. And the Afghan military was successfully pushed back. It lost equipment. Some equipment couldn't get out because it wasn't repaired."
Clark called the loss of 13 servicemembers during an attack at Kabul's airport a "real tragedy," adding, "My heart goes out to those families, each and every one of them. I know the military chain of command was scrambling to get this executed. I think the generals in charge thought they were doing a good job. They had a lot going on at the time, and they got a lot of people out.
"But we left a lot of people behind. We left a lot of equipment behind. And, you know, this is a very, very tough operation to execute."
He said, "We didn't do it [in Vietnam] in 1975, we didn't do it effectively in 2021."
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Kate McManus ✉
Kate McManus is a New Jersey-based Newsmax writer who's spent more than two decades as a journalist.
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