AMID chaotic scenes of desperate people trying to escape Afghanistan, President Joe Biden on Friday stuck to his guns, saying the promised withdrawal was necessary and was never going to go smoothly.
And while the president said he was committed to helping translators and other foreign nationals who helped the United States during its tumultuous, 20-year stay in the central Asian nation, he struck an unusually populist tone as he described America’s final task.
“Let me be clear: Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,” Biden said.
“I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or that it will be without risk of loss, but as commander in chief I will mobilize every resource necessary” to get Americans out safely, the president added.
The president recounted the thousands of people already spirited out of Kabul, either by U.S. planes or private charters, including 169 Americans lifted over the wall from a frantic crowd outside the airport to safety within. He described as “heartbreaking” and “gut-wrenching” the horrific scenes of the Taliban speedily taking control of the country even as Americans were trying to complete a withdrawal negotiated by former President Donald Trump last year.
But whether the United States retreated from Afghanistan 15 years ago, five years ago or some time in the future, the departure would be messy. Staying, he said, would only cost more billions of dollars and American lives.
“We went to Afghanistan with the express purpose of getting rid of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as well as getting rid of Osama bin Laden. And we did,” added Biden, who has now served in the White House in two of the four presidential administrations that have grappled with the Afghanistan War.
“It’s time to end this war,” he added.
Asked why the withdrawal was so hasty, given that no Americans were being attacked, Biden very unusually referred to his predecessor by name.
“The reason they weren’t being attacked was part of an agreement Trump had made years earlier” with the Taliban.
Biden has said he would have pulled the U.S. out of Afghanistan anyway but added, “I made the decision. The buck stops with me.”
Biden may have hoped for a rosier assessment of the situation as the crisis entered its second week. The president was supposed to speak at 1 p.m. Friday afternoon and leave immediately for his home state of Delaware for a break. But the continuing crisis – including reports that people could not get to the airport safely to depart – delayed his speech and caused him to cancel his Friday departure plans.
Biden also faces a pivotal time next week in domestic policy, as the House considers a prized bipartisan infrastructure bill and a bigger, partisan reconciliation package with trillions more in spending.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has a delicate task in appeasing progressive who want the bigger package as a condition of voting for the smaller and more targeted bipartisan deal, as well as moderates who are leery of the larger reconciliation package.
Passage of the infrastructure deal alone would be a huge victory for Biden, who pledged to improve the nation’s infrastructure and to bring back a more bipartisan approach to governing.
But the Afghanistan situation has been an enormous public relations disaster, unnerving Democrats who are already anxious about losing control of the House next year. Many have delivered unvarnished criticism not of the withdrawal itself – which has broad bipartisan support – but the way it was handled.
“We’re not going to win the war in Afghanistan, but there are devastating ways we could lose. The course we are on today suggests that we are going to leave a lot of people behind,” Rep. Seth Moulton, Massachusetts Democrat, said in a web discussion this week hosted by the Center for a New American Security.
“We so mismanaged the retreat,” and aggravating the situation, “we’re relying on the good of the Taliban to save our people,” added Moulton, who is an Iraq War veteran.
Biden, defiant, said he was determined to get Americans out of an unpopular conflict.
“There will be plenty of time to criticize and second-guess once this operation is over,” he said. “But now, I am focused on getting this job done.”
- AP
