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Gen. Milley warned Biden of looming disaster in Afghanistan. The president didn't listen.

President Joe Biden's rash decision to quickly pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan came at a terrible cost. He was fully apprised of that cost ahead of time – and in chillingly prescient detail. Yet, he did it anyway.

How do we know?

It was made clear Tuesday in Senate testimony from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Biden's top military adviser.

Milley declined, as all presidential advisers do, to share his specific words to Biden. But the general made it easy to read between lines.

Milley said his opinion about what would happen if U.S. forces were too rapidly pulled out of Afghanistan had been formed a year ago. He told senators he never wavered from that opinion, up through and including when Biden asked for it earlier this year.

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Milley's opinion? That a force of at least 2,500 troops should remain in Afghanistan until the Taliban abided by promises the group made in February 2020, when they signed the peace agreement in Doha, Qatar, with the Trump administration.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley testifies on Capitol Hill on Sept. 28, 2021.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley testifies on Capitol Hill on Sept. 28, 2021.

Among those promises were implementation of a cease-fire and a good faith effort to negotiate peace with the Afghan government. But the Taliban failed to honor almost all of their obligations under the agreement, and beyond that, refused to renounce al-Qaida, which attacked the United States on 9/11, Milley told senators.

Troop withdrawal: A litany of horrors

Milley described to senators what he always believed would flow from a precipitous withdrawal of American troops. His list reads like a litany of horrors:

►The Afghan military and government would collapse. There would be civil war or a Taliban takeover.

►A region where one neighboring country, Pakistan, has nuclear weapons, would grow unstable. Violent extremism would be boosted globally.

►And the resulting human misery in Afghanistan would include "significant numbers of refugees, a degradation in health, schools (and) women’s rights, and revenge killings."

Biden evidently listened to all of this. Yet, he remained unfazed, so powerful was his urge to fulfill a campaign promise to bring home the relatively small number of troops deployed to Afghanistan.

Biden's Afghanistan horror: A well-intentioned miscalculation with disastrous, predictable results

We all know what happened next. One by one, Milley's list of terrible things began to come true, far faster than anyone – including Milley – predicted.

Afghan military resistance did, in fact, evaporate in the face of a Taliban offensive. The ruling government in Kabul collapsed. The Taliban assumed power.

The evacuation of U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghans – while an operational success with more than 124,000 airlifted out – was dreadfully scarred by chaos; the slaughter of 13 U.S. troops and dozens of Afghans in a suicide bombing; the killing of 10 innocent Afghans, including as many as seven children, in an errant U.S. drone strike; and the failure to rescue an untold number of American citizens still stranded in Afghanistan.

'Logistical success but a strategic failure'

In a striking display of candor from a top, current presidential adviser, Milley told senators that the withdrawal "was a logistical success but a strategic failure."

Asked by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., about all the tragedies that Milley predicted would come true, the general said, "Yes, things I listed are probably happening right now."

And when it comes to a refugee and humanitarian crisis, the crippling of women's rights and revenge killings, his forecast was not only correct but it's also all happening much too fast.

However this sad chapter about American involvement in Afghanistan stains Biden's legacy now and forever, one thing is certain: The president can't say he wasn't warned.

Gregg Zoroya is an editorial writer at USA TODAY, where he writes about the environment, military and foreign policy, and world affairs. He traveled to Afghanistan to cover the war for USA TODAY. He authored “The Chosen Few: A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gen. Milley's Senate testimony: Biden failed to listen on Afghanistan