title: The buck stops there: Biden can’t deflect responsibility for the Afghanistan meltdown
body: It is impossible to square those statements with what military brass told the Senate Armed Services Committee under oath yesterday. Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command overseeing that part of the world, relayed that earlier this year, he recommended maintaining a small force in Afghanistan. And while he would not testify that he said this directly to the president, that was the indisputable implication. Additionally, McKenzie told the committee that he spoke with Biden directly about the recommendation by Gen. Scott Miller, who until July was the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, that the military leave a few thousand troops on the ground there.