Biden defends troop withdrawal after Afghanistan falls to Taliban

WASHINGTON (CN) — Following the fall of Afghanistan’s government to Taliban control, President Joe Biden returned to the White House from Camp David on Monday to address the nation and firmly defend his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the country. 

“We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals; get who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure al-Qaida could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again. We did that,” the president said, speaking publicly for the first time since the Taliban seized Kabul on Sunday.

As the militant group overran the capital city of 6 million, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani fled and yielded control to an interim government led by Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

After the Taliban captured 12 provincial capitals within the last week, the State Department had announced on Thursday that it would send troops to the Kabul International Airport to aid an evacuation of the U.S. embassy located in the city. 

Late last week, the embassy advised American citizens in Afghanistan to leave the country immediately. 

U.S. officials say that at least seven people have been killed at Kabul’s airport as thousands of Afghani and foreign citizens stormed the runway Monday in an attempt to leave the country. Viral videos showed people falling from a departing plane that they were trying to cling to.

Asserting that there was never a “good time” to withdraw American troops, Biden said Monday that the scenes coming out of Afghanistan are heartbreaking but that lurching into a third decade of the war would not have prevented the country’s collapse.

“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified centralized democracy,” he said from the East Room of the White House. “Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on the American homeland.”

Biden and former President Donald Trump both expressed a desire to end America’s longest war, which was prompted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaida—a terror group that had been protected in Afghanistan by the then-ruling Taliban.

During the Trump administration, the number of troops on the ground was reduced to 2,500.

The Trump administration struck a deal last year with the Taliban, agreeing to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021 if Taliban leaders engage in peace talks with Afghanistan’s government and agree not to serve as a safe harbor for groups like al-Qaida. 

Handling the situation on his own terms, Biden announced in April that all U.S. troops would be removed from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. His administration sped up the withdrawal last month.

With the U.S. most recently planning to remove all forces by the end of August, Biden said last week that Afghans "must fight for themselves." 

On Monday, the president, who is currently on a presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland, said he was faced with a choice between following through with the agreement or preparing to send thousands of troops back into combat. 

He blamed Afghanistan’s political leaders for giving up the fight and fleeing the country, and the Afghan military for collapsing “sometimes without trying to fight.”

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight themselves,” he said. 

Biden said the U.S. had provided the Afghan government every tool it needed to fend off the Taliban, including the funding of its air force.

“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future,” he added.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other top U.S. officials made statements and television appearances earlier in the day to defend the Biden administration's decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. 

Blinken contended that withdrawal is the right move, adding that Biden did not previously know Taliban rule would be imminent. 

In a statement in early July, the president said, "The jury is still out. But the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely." 

On Monday, Biden admitted that the Afghan government’s collapse occurred much more rapidly than anticipated.

Many Afghans who assisted U.S. and coalition forces are still waiting to be evacuated as the Biden administration seeks countries in which to temporarily house those in danger of Taliban retaliation. 

He said those allies were not evacuated sooner because the Afghanistan government discouraged a swift exodus in order to avoid further tumult in the area.  

The U.S. will continue to support the Afghan people, Biden said, and will continue pushing for regional diplomacy.

He said that he expects his decision to draw criticism, but that he would rather be criticized for his actions than pass the decision on to a fifth U.S. president. 

Follow Erika Williams on Twitter

Follow @@ErikaKate5

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit