It was time to finish...

Division, the last US personnel to leave Afghan soil.

“I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit,” Biden said, speaking from the Dining Room in an address to the nation.

To the Islamic State-khorasan, which has claimed responsibility for the Kabul airport bombing that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US troops, Biden said: “We are not done with you yet.” The US killed two IS-K “planners” and “facilitators” in a drone strike in Nangarhar province and one suspected suicide bomber headed for the airport in another strike.

The President defended his decisions to end the war, wrap up the evacuation operation before his self-imposed deadline of August 31 and pushed back against those who have argued that the US could have stayed longer in Afghanistan and the airlift could not have started earlier or have been more orderly.

He reiterated that the decision to end the military operations at Kabul airport was based on “unanimous recommendation” of his civilian and military advisers, the secretary of state, the secretary of defence, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and all the service chiefs.

Biden called the evacuation an “extraordinary success”, saying “no country in history has done more to airlift out the residents of another country, as we have done”. To those who have argued the evacuation should have started earlier, in June of July, and in a more orderly manner, he said, that there still would have been a “rush to the airport, a breakdown in confidence and control of the government, and it still would have been a very difficult and dangerous mission”.

The US President said that when he decided in April to end the Afghanistan war, the assumption was that the Afghan military that had been trained and equipped by the US would put up a fight. “That assumption that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown turned out not to be accurate,” he said.