President Biden defended the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan on Monday after the Taliban completed a stunning takeover of Kabul, passing the blame onto the country’s overrun military and saying the exit was always destined to prove painful.
Facing intense criticism enflamed by a deadly scene of desperate Afghans attempting to flee at Kabul’s international airport, Biden said “there was never a good time to withdraw” but that staying wasn’t worth future losses in American blood and treasure.
“I stand squarely behind my decision,” the president said in a defiant 18-minute address from the East Room of the White House. “If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”
He acknowledged the Taliban’s siege of the country escalated more quickly than he expected after America wound down its two-decade campaign in South Asia.
But he said Afghanistan’s leadership “gave up” and that U.S. soldiers should not be fighting in a conflict the “Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
Biden said the U.S. will continue to support the Afghan people, push for regional diplomacy and speak out for the rights of Afghans.
Many disagreed with Biden’s decision, angered by the chaos the world witnessed over the weekend as the Taliban ultimately captured Kabul, the capital, and Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani left the country.
The U.S. Embassy has been evacuated and the American flag lowered, with diplomats relocating to the airport to help with the chaotic evacuation. Other Western countries also closed their missions and were flying out staff and their citizens.
Leon Panetta, who served as President Barack Obama’s defense secretary, compared the situation to America’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy.
“It unfolded quickly, and the president thought that everything would be fine, and that was not the case,” Panetta told CNN. “But President Kennedy took responsibility for what took place. And I strongly recommend to President Biden that he take responsibility, admit the mistakes that were made.”
Biden said he’d rather take the criticism over the fallout than pass the decision of how and when to withdraw to a fifth U.S. president. The decision to leave Afghanistan is “the right one for America,” he said, because keeping a U.S. presence there was no longer a U.S. national security interest.
He described the images coming out of Afghanistan — especially at the airport in Kabul, where Afghans descended in hopes of fleeing the country — as “gut-wrenching.” Video of Afghans clinging to a U.S. Air Force plane and running alongside it as prepared to take off circulated widely on the internet.
Senior U.S. military officials said the chaos at the airport in Kabul left seven people dead Monday, including some who fell from a departing American military transport jet. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss ongoing operations.
Late Monday, hundreds of people remained trapped between American forces trying to push them out of the airport and Taliban forces trying to keep them in, witnesses said.
The ease with which the Taliban overtook the nation has threatened to erase 20 years of Western-led efforts to remake Afghanistan that saw tens of thousands of Afghans and more than 3,500 U.S. and allied troops killed. The initial invasion in October 2001 drove the Taliban from power and scattered al-Qaida, which had planned the 9/11 attacks while being protected in Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban, which ruled in accordance with a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, women were largely confined to their homes and suspected criminals faced mutilation or public execution. The insurgents have sought to project greater moderation in recent years, but most Afghans remain skeptical.
On Monday, Nillan, a 27-year-old resident of Kabul who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals, said she did not see a single woman out on the streets during a 15-minute drive, “only men and boys.”
Unsurprisingly, former President Donald Trump pounced on Biden, though he once pushed for an even quicker troop withdrawal timeline than the current course. Trump, who unsuccessfully invited Taliban leaders to Camp David in 2019, struck a deal with the insurgent faction via phone in March 2020 — a striking moment for a sitting U.S. president.
“The outcome in Afghanistan, including the withdrawal, would have been totally different if the Trump administration had been in charge,” Trump said in a Monday statement that underscored the possible political peril facing Biden. “It’s not that we left Afghanistan,” he said. “It’s the grossly incompetent way we left!”
Obama and Trump wanted to leave the region but ultimately stood down in the face of resistance from military leaders and other political concerns. Biden, on the other hand, has been steadfast in his refusal to change the Aug. 31 deadline, in part because of his belief the American public is on his side.
A late July ABC News/Ipsos poll, for instance, showed 55% of Americans approving of Biden’s handling of the troop withdrawal.
Most Republicans have not pushed Biden to keep troops in Afghanistan over the long term and they also supported Trump’s own push to exit the country. Still, some in the GOP stepped up their critique of Biden’s withdrawal strategy and said images from Sunday of American helicopters circling the U.S. Embassy in Kabul evoked the humiliating departure of U.S. personnel from Saigon in 1975.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deemed the scenes of withdrawal as “the embarrassment of a superpower laid low.”
With News Wire Services
