'I cannot call this evacuation a success': Former State Department officer contradicts Biden with a harrowing account of chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and telling a mother to 'get on a plane' or 'lose your last chance of freedom'

Joe Biden has famously called the 2021 U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan an 'extraordinary success,' but a former State Department official who was there is saying the president is plain wrong.

As hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians flooded the Hamid Karzai International Airport in August 2021, former State Department Foreign Service Officer Sam Aronson swapped out his pen and paper for flashbang grenades and night vision goggles.

His diplomatic tools were replaced by instruments of war, an indication, Aronson said, that the plan had gone horribly wrong. 

'Let me be clear: I cannot call this evacuation a success,' he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last fall, according to a copy of his testimony obtained by DailyMail.com. 

'More than 200 people were murdered or wounded, and thousands more, like me, struggle with invisible scars and moral injuries,' he said.

One of the most scarring situations of the saga, Aronson said, was the heartbreaking ultimatum he had to tell an Afghan mother.

'I remember giving a horrible choice to a young mother whose husband got stopped by the Taliban: Get on the plane and never see your husband again, or exit the airport and lose your only chance at freedom.'

'I live with memories of women and men walking through razor wire, slicing up their bodies, for a chance that I would allow them into the airport,' he continued.

He also recounted having to hotwire buses to get transportation because no U.S. officials had access to vehicles upon landing at the airport. 

'The issue was that the vehicles you had one morning were likely not the vehicles you had later that day, because there was a finite number of vehicles and we were all -- or many elements of the response had to steal vehicles from one another.'

The operation had tragic consequences for the Afghans and for U.S. personnel.  

Aronson said when he returned to the U.S. after the operation he was in physical pain from the harsh conditions at the airport. 

And despite a pledge from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that employees would not be penalized for seeking therapy and mental care following the mission, he was denied leave, and told if he wanted to take a day off, he would have to foot the bill. 

Later, when he was given an assignment in Iraq, he told his supervisor that he was suffering from mental issues relating to his previous deployment to Afghanistan and requested a different project that would keep from triggering his post-traumatic stress disorder.

His supervisor was standoffish and the situation led to his desire to seek a job outside of government and away 'from bullets that were flying over my head.' 

Aronson's testimony gives an insight into how the sloppy withdrawal impacted  individuals who were on the ground, and how the mission which the president dubbed as a success is far from it. 

In total, the operation was able to get over 120,000 Afghans out of the Taliban-ruled country in less than two weeks. 

'The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery, and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals,' Biden said after the last airlift had left Afghanistan. 

The White House has taken little responsibility for the worrisome withdrawal, often reminding reporters how they were 'severely constrained' by Trump-era deals, like the Doha Agreement. 

But last month two now-retired top generals in charge of the withdrawal said the blame should rest on the shoulders of policy makers in charge at the time of the operation. 

'It remains my opinion that if there is culpability in this attack, it lies in policy decisions that created the environment,' retired Gen. Frank McKenzie testified during a hearing with the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March. 

'Culpability and responsibility do not lie with the troops on the ground,' he added.

He was against withdrawing military service members from the country then and has recently said how that decision has directly led to a growing threat that ISIS could attack the U.S. and its allies. 

Retired Gen. Mark Milley also laid blame with the State Department and the executive branch during the hearing.  

'On 14th August [2021] the noncombatant evacuation operation decision was made by the Department of State and the U.S. military alerted, mobilized and rapidly deployed faster than any military in the world would ever do,' Milley said. 

'It is my assessment that that decision came too late.'

Milley also said that if he could make the decision again, he would have begun the evacuation over a month before the withdrawal was ordered by State Department and White House officials.

'I would've brought the embassy and the State Department out with the military by the middle of July,' he said. 'If there was a do-over, that would be it.'