Transcript: Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie on “Face the Nation,” June 2, 2024

The following is a transcript of an interview with former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, on “Face the Nation,” which aired June 2, 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the former commander of US forces in the Middle East, retired General Frank McKenzie. His new book The Melting Point is available this Tuesday. Good to see you, sir.

FORMER COMMANDER OF U.S. FORCES MIDDLE EAST GENERAL FRANK MCKENZIE: It’s good to be here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So on Friday, President Biden said that Hamas is no longer capable of holding another October 7th. When he was last with us in February, he said that Israel’s success has been very limited. Do you think they can declare success now?

GER. MCKENZIE: I think they’re a lot closer than they were a few months ago. I still think that Hamas’s political and military leadership exists largely in one piece. Many of their combat formations were destroyed. But I think Hamas has become significantly worn down.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve also raised concerns a few times in recent months about America’s continued presence in the Middle East, which you say is crucial here. Right now, we’re seeing so many different flashpoints, one of them in the Red Sea, where CBS’s David Martin reported that the US used a 5,000-pound bunker buster bomb in Yemen last week. The Houthis are attacking shipping. We are concerned about the safety of troops in Syria and Iraq. Is it necessary to continue?

GER. MCKENZIE: Well, I think we continue to be the critical nation in the Middle East. I think everyone expects us to be an honest broker. If we consider the Houthis situation simply as an example, I would say that we have been too passive. We have allowed the Houthis to truly dominate global maritime communications, effectively closing the Suez Canal. And this is something that is not just bad for the United States, but for many other nations around the world. In fact, it has nothing to do with Israel or the conflict in Gaza. Rather, it is a broader principle for the United States. But essentially, we have been catching and not throwing ourselves into this conflict, despite sending multibillion-dollar warships to the Red Sea. The sign that we are dropping bigger bombs may be good, but we need to get to the source of the attacks. And the source of the attacks is the Houthi leadership and command and control facilities in Yemen. And I would say the threat of escalation is very small if we conduct these attacks.

MARGARET BRENNAN: When you say ‘we,’ you think of the Biden administration.

GER. MCKENZIE: I think the United States and our allies.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You largely try to avoid politics and directly address the presidents you served under in the book you wrote here. But he played a key role in some of these very significant national security decisions: killing ISIS commander Baghdadi, taking Qasem Soleimani off the battlefield, executing the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And you apportion some blame to former US presidents. But he points to the Doha Agreement, the withdrawal negotiated by the Trump administration, as one of the worst negotiating mistakes ever made by the US.

GER. MCKENZIE: I think it was. And it was… and also, by the way, we implemented the agreement. If we had actually respected the strict terms of the agreement, we might have been able to get something out of it. But in fact, we treated the Doha Agreement as a timetable for leaving Afghanistan. And that political objective remained between two presidents, President Trump and President Biden, when in fact there were procedures in the Doha Agreement, if we had respected them, that would have required the Taliban to do certain things in return. We do not require this. And, in effect, I would say that the Doha Agreement was the operational mechanism that killed Afghanistan, that destroyed the government of Afghanistan because they saw that we were eager to leave regardless of the cost. And that was a very important and disheartening thing, I think, for the government of Afghanistan.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But as you point out, this occurred between two presidents-

GER. MCKENZIE: Absolutely.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Biden and Trump.

GER. MCKENZIE: Margaret, I would say that President Trump and President Biden were as different as any two presidents in our history, but they both shared the political goal of leaving Afghanistan regardless, really, of the consequences.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You wrote… you wrote resignation letters a few times, but the only time you really came close was after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and a drone strike on August 29th that was intended to kill ISIS but killed civilians. If you had such strong objections, why was it at this point that you almost resigned and not at others?

GER. MCKENZIE: So I feel like it’s very important that generals don’t resign over political differences. This is not good for the Republic. This is not how our military system is supposed to work. And, historically, that’s not how it worked from the Korean War until World War II. Many generals, many senior generals disagreed with the presidential decisions, but they did not resign. Therefore, I did not think it was appropriate to resign. In my particular case, if there had been discussions about the accusation of my subordinates, then I felt it was necessary for me to actually accept some of that blame. Now we didn’t do that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. You stayed. In the book you talk a lot about conversations you had about implementing the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the planning for that, especially with the Trump administration. At one point, you say that President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, advised you not to present certain options for fear that he would choose them, like going to zero in Afghanistan. You wrote that Trump made the decision to kill Qasem Soleimani, but his national security advisers told him, “There will be no consequences for that,” which is not what U.S. intelligence said, and that is not what the US CENTCOM thought. Why is it important for the public to know that the people around the commander in chief were either not sharing the full picture with him or altering what he was allowed to see?

GER. MCKENZIE: Well, every president, whether he is – or the last two – has advisers who give him all kinds of different opinions. The military contribution that arrives is a part of this. And that was my… I was relentlessly focused on that. Every president also has to make political calculations, not just these two presidents, but presidents since President Roosevelt in World War II have had to balance America’s domestic political goals with what was happening around the world. So this is not new or unusual in these times. I think in the case of Qasem Soleimani, I think President Trump made the right decision. I don’t believe that we ultimately made the right decision in Afghanistan, and I’ve been very clear about that in open testimony, and that’s true of two presidents.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But it’s cherry-picking, right, of information to present to the commander in chief when he has to make a call, and you write about the infighting, you say, and the accusations that followed Trump’s political appointments at the Pentagon . You wrote about the choice to reduce to 2,500 troops, you say you don’t even know where that number came from. It was kind of arbitrary. And there was an incident where a mysterious letter appeared signed saying: withdraw from Afghanistan, and you hunted it down and it ended up being discarded. How does something like this happen, with such serious consequences, and are you afraid it could happen again if there is a second Trump administration?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Margaret, I think the period from the 2021 presidential election to the 2022 inauguration was a particularly dangerous time within the Pentagon. And I believe that’s where the U.S. military has a role to play. It is a non-political role. It is a role where we respond to the orders that have been given. And at the same time, there are political appointees within the Pentagon who are appointed by the president, members of his party, and they have their own goals there. And we respond to orders from the chain of command. It is very important to know who can actually give orders and who cannot. Many people who walk around the Pentagon are not in a position to give orders. Orders flow from the president to the secretary to combatant commanders. Everyone else has an opinion and those opinions can actually impact the decisions made, but they are not in the chain of command.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Overall, it’s a fascinating read. Thanks for coming to talk about the book.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be back.