President Biden Defends his Decision to Withdraw American Troops From Afghanistan

With pictures and video of Afghanistan citizens, mostly men, clinging to air transports departing Kabul International Airport all over social media after the Taliban swiftly retook control of the country after American and Allied-N.A.T.O. troop withdrawals, President Joe Biden spoke to the American People and again defended his decision to end the United State’s longest war.

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Borrowing the Harry Truman phrase, “the buck stops with him,” Mr. Biden acknowledged that he and his National Security Team were surprised with the ease and speed of the Taliban offensive to retake all of Afghanistan.

He also listed several reasons justifying his decision to withdraw all American forces. They included:

  • The mission into Afghanistan-getting Bin Laden and decimating Al Queda was accomplished ten years ago.
  • The United States was not meant to stay in Afghanistan to nation-build.
  • The previous Trump Administration negotiated the deal that brought the Taliban back into legitimacy and, in the end, power.
  • The Afghan Government and military forces were corrupt and mostly fled at the first sign of hostilities.
  • The need to reposition American military and intelligence resources to the terrorist and geopolitical threats that exist in 2021.
  • Not giving China and Russia any regional advantages by pouring more American resources into the Afghan quagmire.

Perhaps Biden’s most on-point statements during his address were:

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war, and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves…We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future…Here’s what I believe to my core, it is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not…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? How many more lives, American lives, is it worth? How many endless rows of headstones in Arlington National Cemetery? “

The President is totally correct in that remark. Why should the United States bravest fight for a cause in a faraway nation when most of the people in that country will not defend themselves?

Moving forward, Mr. Biden said he has deployed six thousand troops to:

  • “…assisting in the departure of US and allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan, and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside of Afghanistan.”
  • “…provide assistance to move more SIV eligible Afghans and their families out of Afghanistan.”
  • “…expanding refugee access to cover other vulnerable Afghans who worked for our embassy. US non-governmental agencies or US non-governmental organizations, and Afghans who otherwise are at great risk, and US news agencies.”

Mr. Biden said that this mission, called Operation Allies Refuge, would be “short in time, limited in scope, and focused in its objectives: Get our people and our allies as safely, as quickly as possible. And once we have completed this mission, we will conclude our military withdrawal.”

The President also cited Afghanis wanting to stay in their country and the former Government not wanting to “trigger a crisis of confidence” with a mass exodus as partial reasons for not starting the process of flying Afghan civilians out sooner.

Unfortunately, while acknowledging that his Administration did not anticipate the rapid Taliban takeover of the country, Mr. Biden did not admit that his people, as bipartisan lawmakers have maintained, dropped the ball in setting up the Afghan refugee program earlier.

As mentioned in an earlier piece today, while Joe Biden probably made the right decision in removing American troops,  how successful this military mission to evacuate the remaining American personnel and Afghanis that worked for the United States and other Allied/N.A.T.O. forces will partially determine whether the withdrawal from Afghanistan is largely a success or an unmitigated disaster.

Another factor in determining if the Biden decision was the right one will be whether or not terrorist organizations like a version of Al-Queda again find a home in Afghanistan and use it as a base to launch terrorist attacks like another 9/11.

Like so many focal points in history, time will tell whether Biden made the right call. Now it is just a matter of how soon history will render its judgment.

 

 

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6 thoughts on “President Biden Defends his Decision to Withdraw American Troops From Afghanistan”

  1. Excellent post at Crooks & Liars. It’s quite a bit long but well worth the read. An excerpt:

    “Questions Biden critics must answer

    If they’re even to begin to have any credibility on Afghanistan, all critics of Biden need to answer questions so simple, so fundamental, and so beyond their ability to formulate, that it will be to their benefit merely to show them what to ask:

    If it was wrong to leave now, when would it have been right?
    The achievement of what metrics would have proven that it finally was time to leave?
    If those metrics haven't been achieved after twenty years, why is there reason to believe they ever could have been?
    How much more would it have cost in military lives lost, military personnel wounded, and money wasted?

    But supporters of endless war never ask those questions, and reporters and pundits never ask those questions. This is where the criticism of Biden is particularly insidious. Any critics of the Afghanistan pullout must answer those questions. Anyone in the media interviewing any critics of the Afghanistan pullout must ask those questions. Anyone failing to ask and answer those questions automatically forfeits any right to be taken seriously as an analyst or critic of Biden’s Afghanistan policy.

    But with Afghanistan, there is an even bigger question that every ostensible analyst needs to be asked: Do you know Afghanistan’s history? Because the real secret about Afghanistan, that has been hiding in plain sight all along, is that there never has been stability in Afghanistan. The British couldn’t create it. The Russians couldn’t create it. The Afghan people themselves couldn’t create it. And even a cursory review of Afghanistan’s history makes that clear.”

    Followed by their history from the beginning. At the end of the historical section the author asks a pertinent question:

    “And the United States is supposed to solve this?”

    https://crooksandliars.com/2021/08/bidens-hypocritical-afghanistan-critics

  2. Wileybud is nailing it.

    Follow the money to the 20 room mansions surrounding DC, where defense contractors live in the most expensive zip codes in the entire country.

    Murder is big business.

    Murder is also great for ratings! Bombs are exciting!

    And who doesn’t swell up with patriotic pride anytime we see a video of a soldier coming home to a happy wife/children/tail wagging dog?

    That retired general/admiral on the TV? Look him up, he’s either working for a defense contractor funded “think tank” or for the defense contractor directly.

    Hey Hollywood, you want access to the military for your movie? To the CIA? You bet, we’re just going to need to make a few changes to the script…

    Don’t support the war? You hate America!

    My daughter once looked up at a sports stadium flyover of military might and said, “that’s to remind you to be afraid”.

    Yep.

  3. Per a Public Citizen Tweet:

    “Defense stocks during the Afghanistan War:

    Lockheed Martin: 1,236% return
    Northrop Grumman: 1,196% return
    Boeing: 975% return
    General Dynamics: 625% return
    Raytheon: 331% return

    The military-industrial complex got exactly what it wanted out of this war.”

  4. “If the Afghanistan debacle had ceased to be profitable we’d have been out of there
    long ago.”

    Indeed. War is good business for US defense contractors.

    I’m so weary of it all. The mountains of dead bodies, the violations of human rights, the squandering of resources, the endless bullsh!t spewed by the politicians…

  5. Liza, the short answer your “whys” is the military industrial complex is a voracious beast. Lockheed-Martin and other defense contractors (including Raytheon) have been raking in massive profits throughout these 20 years. The situation has not been helped by retired military officers who are employed by those same contractors going on the talk shows advocating “victory is just around the corner” while they and the talk show hosts keep mum about the connection. Active duty officers? I’m sure those who kept pushing to stay did so hoping for a cushy defense contractor job upon retirement.

    If the Afghanistan debacle had ceased to be profitable we’d have been out of there long ago.

  6. “The United States was not meant to stay in Afghanistan to nation-build.”

    There lies the problem. If the US was not meant to nation-build then they should have left Afghanistan when the counter-terrorism mission was complete. Otherwise, why were they there for 20 years? And why did the US prop up the weak, corrupt government in Kabul, now using that same weak and corrupt government as one of the justifications for US withdrawal?

    And if the military was corrupt, then why did the US think they would fight? I’m not a military type, but I do know that an effective fighting force requires leadership, discipline, and a clear mission. Weapons and Humvees don’t win wars.

    I don’t blame Biden for what is going to happen to Afghanistan, but he does not deserve praise for the manner in which the US is leaving.

    “We just can’t do this anymore” appears to be the reason for the withdrawal. Sounds more like a reason to end a marriage than a 20 year occupation of a sovereign nation.

    Americans like to move on and we do it so well.

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