Biden Defends Ending Afghanistan Mission as Some Americans Get Left Behind

(The Epoch Times, Aug 31, 2021)

President Joe Biden again defended his administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 30, declaring an end to the 20-year-long conflict, but opening up the possibility for future airstrikes against ISIS affiliates in the country.

“This is the way the mission was designed,” he said of the often messy and chaotic evacuation that has drawn criticism from both major political parties, the media, and family members of soldiers who were recently killed in Kabul by terrorists.

Although Biden has faced significant criticism, he said the military “completed one of the biggest airlifts in history” and that “no nation has done anything like it in all of history.”

“We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy and engagement,” he said, stating that “I take responsibility” for the chaotic evacuation and withdrawal.

However, Biden suggested that it wasn’t possible to leave in a “more orderly manner” than what had transpired in Kabul.

Biden, who didn’t take any questions, blamed the Afghan military and government for collapsing against the Taliban and for “putting the security” of Americans and Afghans on the ground at risk. The Taliban carried out a blistering offensive that captured nearly all of Afghanistan in roughly 11 days.

Moments later, Biden cast some of the blame for the messy evacuation and government collapse on the Trump administration, saying that it was former President Donald Trump who hashed out a deal with the Taliban to pull out of the country by May 1.

Over the past few weeks, Trump, who has repeatedly bashed Biden’s pullout strategy, said that his withdrawal was conditional. Other Trump-era officials, including former acting Pentagon chief Chris Miller, recently said that the United States wasn’t going to leave Afghanistan under Trump’s deal and would have left a few troops behind.