During portions of an interview with NBC released on Wednesday, former CENTCOM Commander Gen. Frank McKenzie (Ret.), who helped oversee the evacuation of Afghanistan, stated that he wishes the United States had begun to evacuate people earlier, and he believes that the events in August of 2021 were set in motion "when we decided to leave completely in April of that year. And once you make that basic decision, then events took on a certain trajectory." And that this decision was "not a military decision. That's a political decision."