President Joe Biden on Monday said he stood "squarely behind" his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and rejected broad criticism of the chaotic withdrawal that is posing a crisis for him.
Gavino Garay reports.
“I stand squarely behind my decision.” Facing fierce blowback for the chaos that ensued after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden defended his administration’s handling of the evacuation -- saying that while the Taliban's rise was quicker than expected, Afghanistan’s political leaders fled the country and left behind an Afghan army unwilling to fight the militant Islamists.
“This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.
So what's happened?
Afghan political leaders gave up and fled the country.
The Afghan military collapsed some time without trying to fight.
If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was the right decision.” He has also blamed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, for empowering the Taliban and leaving them "in the strongest position militarily since 2001." The decision to withdraw sparked criticism from allies and adversaries after the Afghan government collapsed within days and the U.S. scrambled to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees from Kabul.
The Taliban’s advance led to harrowing scenes of thousands of civilians desperate to flee the country, prompting the U.S. on Monday to temporarily suspend evacuations.
A social media video showed Afghans desperately clinging to the outside of U.S. military aircraft on the tarmac at the airport in Kabul… and later, this video, that showed objects falling from a plane.
BIDEN: “If Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance of the Taliban.
Now, there is no chance that one year, one more year, five more years or 20 more years of US military boots on the ground would have made any difference.” The political risks facing Biden from this decision, however, remain to be seen.
Many Americans have expressed support for Trump and Biden's decision to leave Afghanistan, America's longest war.
Biden also said his decision is a result of the commitment he made to American troops that he wasn't going to ask them to continue to risk their lives for a war that should have ended long ago.
Biden coupled his defense with a warning to Taliban leaders: let the U.S. withdrawal proceed unimpeded.
“If they attack our personnel or disrupt our operation, the US presence will be swift and the response will be swift and forceful.
We will defend our people with devastating force if necessary”
