- Biden blames Trump, Afghan leaders who ‘gave up’ and soldiers who refused to fight for the rapid Taliban takeover and chaos at Kabul airport
- President cut his trip to Camp David short and returned to the White House Monday to deliver remarks on Afghanistan
- Biden was being criticized for being out of sight as Afghanistan crumbled into chaos
President Joe Biden defended leaving Afghanistan during remarks at the White House Monday.
‘I stand squarely behind my decision,’ Biden said. ‘After 20 years I’ve learned the hard way. That there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.’
The president said he wanted to be ‘straight’ with the American public.
‘The truth is – this did unfold more quickly than we anticipated,’ the president said.
Biden pointed a finger at former President Donald Trump’s agreement with the Taliban – to pull out American troops by May 1, 2021.
Biden also slammed Afghanistan’s political leaders and military forces for refusing to come to the table for a diplomatic answer and also refusing to fight.
‘So I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war, when Afghan troops will not?’ Biden asked.
‘How many more lives, American lives is it worth? How many endless rows of head stones at Arlington National Cemetery?’
‘I’m clear in my answer: I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States,’ he continued.
‘Of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country. Of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of U.S. forces,’ the president added.
Earlier Monday, Biden cut short his break at Camp David, returning to the White House to address the biggest crisis of his presidency so far.
The president landed at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. a little after 1 p.m., ahead of his remarks. He took no questions as he walked by reporters to the waiting motorcade.
Biden was originally supposed to stay at Camp David until Wednesday as part of an August vacation.
But the unfolding pace of events forced him to return.
At least eight people were killed during chaos at the Kabul airport on Monday, as thousands of Afghans traveled to the airfield in hopes of escaping the Taliban.
Two of those killed were armed Afghans shot dead by US troops.
Another three were run over by taxiing jets. An additional three were stowaways who fell from the engines of a US Air Force jet as it took off.
Meanwhile, Taliban fighters are going door to door to find Afghan special forces who fought alongside the U.S., Fox News reported.
Biden tweeted before lunchtime on Monday that he would be returning to the White House to address the nation on the crisis in Afghanistan
It poured in Washington Monday morning, while Biden remained at Camp David. He was supposed to stay at the presidential retreat until Wednesday, but cut the trip short due to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan
The Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the US and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces
A day earlier President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country.
The result is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe and questions about how a president who trumpeted his foreign experience during last year’s campaign could have got things so wrong.
Shortly before his arrival back in Washington, the White House sent out a statement saying Biden was being updated with reports from the Kabul airport, where eight people have reportedly been killed as American forces oversee evacuation efforts.
‘This morning, the President was briefed by his national security team, including the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman Milley, on the security situation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, and ongoing efforts to safely evacuate American citizens, US Embassy personnel and local staff, SIV applicants and their families, and other vulnerable Afghans,’ it said.
Email enquiries sent to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki over the weekend received an automated out-of-office response saying she would return on Aug. 22.
While U.S. military planes flew in an out of Kabul airport to rescue American nationals, it was left to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to defend Biden’s decision for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Sullivan said staying longer would not have changed the overall outcome but was vague about when the nation might hear from its commander in chief.
‘They can expect to hear from the president soon. He’s right now actively engaged with his national security team,’ he told Good Morning America.
‘He is working the situation hard.
‘He is focused on ensuring the mission which is to secure that airport and continue these evacuations that that mission continues and brought to a positive conclusion. He’s deeply engaged on it.
‘At the right point he will address the American people.’
After Sullivan’s appearance, the White House pushed out updated guidance announcing the president would return to Washington.
Except for statements, Biden hasn’t publicly commented on Afghanistan in six days.
‘They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation,’ Biden said Tuesday of Afghan forces. ‘They’ve got to want to fight.’
At the time, the president said he didn’t regret his decision.
Leading up to Biden’s White House return, former President Donald Trump mocked the president’s absence.
‘The outcome in Afghanistan would have been totally different if the Trump Administration had been in charge,’ he said in an emailed statement.
‘Who or what will Joe Biden surrender to next?
‘Someone should ask him, if they can find him.’
On Monday, Sullivan admitted that the administration was surprised at how quickly Kabul had fallen.
‘It is certainly the case that the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated,’ he told NBC’s Today show.
Like other officials, he tried to distance the Biden administration from the collapse, blaming Afghanistan’s government and armed forces and said staying longer would have made little difference.
Taliban fighters stand guard on the road to the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021.
Afghans crowd on to the apron at Kabul airport as they try to flee the country
‘Part of the reason for that… is because at the end of the day, despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to get the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the national Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will,’ he said.
Biden, he also said, was ready to work with other leaders in trying to protect Afghans.
‘He is prepared to marshal the international community on this issue. He cares passionately about these human rights questions, and we will stay focused on them in the period ahead,’ he said.
‘But that was not a reason for the United States to enter a third decade of war in the middle of an internal conflict in another country.’
Talking points given to Democratic lawmakers made the same argument.
‘The president was not willing to enter a third decade of conflict and surge in thousands of more troops to fight in a civil war that Afghanistan wouldn’t fight for themselves,’ a memo said.
It also added, ‘The administration knew that there was a distinct possibility that Kabul would fall to the Taliban.’
‘It was not an inevitability. It was a possibility,’ the document said.
It also said ‘indefinite war was and is unacceptable to the president.’
Republicans laid the blame squarely with Biden.
In a joint statement, three former security officials in the Trump administration said withdrawal was the right decision but had been badly botched.
‘The difference between then and now is leadership,’ said Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
‘The Biden Administration alone owns this failure, adding Afghanistan to Biden’s long history of, as President Obama’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, being “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”‘