OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has a tough job, there is no doubt about it. Answering for 78-year-old Joe Biden cannot be simple.
But sometimes the things she says are as head-scratching as the things Biden says, which makes everything tough to comprehend for some.
This week she had the unenviable task of explaining why Biden apparently did not listen to his top military advisors, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of Central Command and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared to contradict what Biden said about the advice he received before deciding to pull troops from Afghanistan.
“As @POTUS told ABC, ending the war in Afghanistan was in our national interest. He said advice was split, but consensus of top military advisors was 2500 troops staying meant escalation due to deal by the previous admin. @SecDef, the Chairman, and GEN McKenzie all reiterated,” Psaki said as a defense on Twitter.
As @POTUS told ABC, ending the war in Afghanistan was in our national interest. He said advice was split, but consensus of top military advisors was 2500 troops staying meant escalation due to deal by the previous admin. @SecDef, the Chairman, and GEN McKenzie all reiterated.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) September 28, 2021
On Tuesday, Psaki said to reporters that “there were recommendations made by a range of his advisors.”
“Look, I’m not going to get into specific details of who recommended what. But I can — I would reiterate a little bit of what I conveyed before, which is that there were recommendations made by a range of his advisors — something he welcomed, something he asked them to come to him clear-eyed about, to give him candid advice,” the press secretary said.
“What is also clear though — and I’d also note, again, what Secretary Austin said today is that was not going to be a sustainable, over the long term, troop presence. We were always going to look at escalating the numbers, at potentially going back to war with the Taliban, at risking casualties. That was not a decision the President was going to make.
“But, of course, he welcomes advice. He welcomed advice. Ultimately, it’s up to the Commander-in-Chief to make a decision. He made a decision: It was time to end a 20-year war,” she said.
But let’s take a look at what was said by Biden in an interview with George Stephanopoulos.
Stephanopoulus: “But your top military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.”
Biden: “No, they didn’t. It was split. Tha– that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.”
Stephanopoulus: “They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?”
Biden: “No. Not at — not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn’t argue against that.”
Stephanopoulus: “So no one told — your military advisors did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that?’”
Biden: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”
Now fast forward to Tuesday when the reporter pressed Psaki.
“But you are saying here that military advisors to the President said it was okay to pull all the troops out, that it would be fine,” the reporter said.
“That’s not what I said. What I said was they recommended — and I think we should not dumb this down for anybody here. We’re talking about the initial phase post-May 1. We’re not talking about long-term recommendations. There was no one who said, ‘Five years from now we could have 2,500 troops and that would be sustainable.’ And I think that’s important for people to know and to understand,” the press secretary responded.
“It’s also important to note that the risks we were talking about here were the possibility, the likelihood of increasing a troop presence, which we now know to absolutely have been the reality, given it required 6,000 troops to just protect the airport — something we now know,” said.
But the reporter continued, attempting to get a straight answer.
“But the President pulled all U.S. troops out. You are saying that there were military commanders who advised him that that was a good idea — to pull all American troops out — and that General Milley, General McKenzie, General Miller, they said something else, but the President’s top military advisors and others — who you won’t name — told him, ‘Sure, we can pull everyone out,’” the reporter said.
“That’s not how these conversations go. It’s a risk assessment, for every President, about what is in the interest of the United States of America, our military, and our national interests,” the press secretary said.
“And if we had kept 2,500 troops there, we would have increased the number of troops, we would have been at war with the Taliban, we would have had more U.S. casualties. That was a reality everybody was clear-eyed about,” she said.
But wait, here comes the head-scratching quote.
“There are some — as is evidenced by people testifying today — who felt we should have still done that. That is not the decision the President made. It’s up to the Commander-in-Chief to make those decisions,” she said.
As far as we know, unless something has changed, the president and the commander-in-chief are the same.
