Among the litany of mistakes and falsehoods pushed by U.S. military commanders and President Biden in 2021 was the fiction that Afghanistan fell in only “eleven days” in mid-August 2021. In reality, the Taliban takeover unfolded over multiple months following then-President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal “Go-to-Zero” order on April 14, 2021. The architect responsible for that house of cards was then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley.
Many in the Biden Administration — President Biden himself, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and others — joined Milley in pushing the “eleven days” claim, although General Austin “Scottie” Miller, the final commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, was among those who later admitted that Afghanistan had not collapsed in just eleven days, but rather over months.
Just the News previously laid out how Milley also wrongly dismissed the comparison between the fall of Saigon and the impending fall of Kabul, massively inflated the size of the Afghan military and police by falsely claiming that they numbered 325,000 to 350,000 strong, and demonstrated he was not tracking the reality on the ground when he underestimated the speed and scope of Taliban district control in the summer of 2021.
Milley then ran cover for the Biden Administration once the situation went sideways by misleading about how quickly the collapse of Afghanistan had occurred. Biden pardoned him on his last full day in office in January 2025.
Milley did not respond to requests for comment sent to him through Princeton University, where he was named a visiting professor last year, and through JPMorgan Chase, where he has been a senior adviser since 2024, nor to Just the News‘ previous reporting.
Hellbound and Down 