Biden: Afghan leaders gave up; time to leave
WASHINGTON — Speaking to the American people Monday from the East Room, President Joe Biden stood by his decision to end the longest war in United States history and rejected criticism from allies and adversaries about the events of the weekend that left hundreds of Afghans desperately running after military planes as they ferried Americans to safety out of the country’s capital.
“The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on the agreement to draw down our forces,” Biden said, “or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat and lurching into the third decade of conflict.”
He added: “I stand squarely behind my decision.”
Biden acknowledged the truth told by dramatic images over the past 72 hours: a frantic scramble to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in the face of advancing Taliban fighters, which has drawn grim comparisons to the country’s defeated
retreat from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
But he rejected the analogy, insisting that the administration had planned for the possibility of a rapid Taliban takeover and expressed pride that diplomats and other Americans had been evacuated to relative safety at the Kabul airport, which aides said was in the process of being secured by several thousand U.S. troops.
Biden blamed the fall of the Afghan regime on the failure of the country’s military and political leaders to stand up for themselves.
“Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country,” he said, accusing the military of laying down their arms after two decades of U.S. training and hundreds of billions of dollars in equipment and resources. “If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”
He directed his ire at Afghanistan’s political leaders, saying he urged them to engage in real diplomacy.
“This advice was flatly refused,” he said.
Biden vowed again to rescue thousands of Afghans who had helped Americans during the two-decade conflict, but the fate of many who remained in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan was uncertain Monday. And thousands of Afghans with dual U.S. citizenship remained unaccounted for amid reports of revenge attacks by the Taliban as they seized control.
The political effect of the weekend’s dramatic collapse of the Afghan government caught the White House off guard throughout the fast-moving events, even as howls of criticism poured in from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Afghan activists, former President Donald Trump, foreign policy experts and officials from previous administrations.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the Senate, called it a “monumental collapse” in Afghanistan and said responsibility rests squarely with Biden. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a former Marine captain, said the administration had made “not just a national security mistake, but a political mistake, too.” The American Civil Liberties Union said the president is “failing at the fundamentally important task of humanitarian protection.”
In July, in response to questions from reporters, Biden said he thought the fall of the Afghan government was not inevitable because the country’s army was 300,000 strong and as well equipped as any in the world.
On Sunday, the national Republican Party posted a link of Biden’s response on Twitter, adding: “This was just 38 days ago.”
So far, Biden had left it to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other aides to try to explain how the president’s prediction proved so wrong.
Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today” program Monday morning that the administration was in the process of executing what he called a “successful drawdown of our embassy” even as he acknowledged that “the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated, including the Afghans.”
Over the weekend, Biden chose to remain with his family at the presidential retreat at Camp David in the Maryland mountains while the situation in Afghanistan worsened rather than quickly return to the White House. White House officials described several hours of meetings throughout the weekend and said the president was briefed numerous times by top intelligence, diplomatic and military aides as the administration raced to keep up with a reality in Afghanistan that was changing by the hour.
White House officials said there were “active discussions” throughout the weekend about when Biden should publicly address the situation, and what he would say when he did. Officials said they did not want the president to speak before the situation on the ground in Kabul was stable.
By Monday, officials had settled on a message in which the president and his top aides would acknowledge that the Taliban takeover was more rapid than they expected, but that the situation was under control and in line with Biden’s goal of finally removing the United States from a never-ending war.
White House officials, finding few defenders of their efforts in Afghanistan, even among Democrats on Capitol Hill, on Monday distributed talking points to allies to bolster Biden’s position.
The talking points, distributed by the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, include the “topline” assertion that “the president was not willing to enter a third decade of conflict and surge in thousands of troops to fight in a civil war that Afghanistan wouldn’t fight for themselves.”
The administration said the collapse of the Afghan government and ensuing chaos were not indictments of U.S. policy but proof that the only way to forestall disaster would have been to ramp up America’s troop presence.
Answering critics who say the president was caught flat-footed, the talking points assert, “The administration knew that there was a distinct possibility that Kabul would fall to the Taliban. It was not an inevitability. It was a possibility.”
The document also says that the administration “had contingency plans in place for any eventuality — including a quick fall of Kabul. That’s why we had troops pre-positioned in the region to deploy as they have done.”
The lengthy talking points may give allies something to say, but asserting that plans existed may not be much of a defense when televised images show those plans have not been carried out effectively.
DEPARTING JETS SWARMED
Meanwhile at the Kabul airport, Afghans swarmed over the international airport’s tarmac as the U.S. military and others continued evacuation flights. Some climbed into aircraft parked on the taxiway, while others dangled precariously off a jet bridge.
U.S. troops took positions to guard the active runway, but the crowd stormed past them and their armored vehicles. Gunshots rang out. As one U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III tried to take off, a helicopter did low runs in front of it to try to drive people off the runway.
Videos showed a group of Afghans hanging onto the plane just before takeoff and several falling through the air as the airplane rapidly gained altitude over the city.
Senior American military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operation, said that the chaos left seven dead, including several who fell from the flight. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said U.S. forces killed two people he described as carrying weapons in the melee.
Shafi Arifi, who had a ticket to travel to Uzbekistan on Sunday, was unable to board his plane because it was packed with people who raced across the tarmac and climbed aboard, with no police or airport staff in sight.
“There was no room for us to stand,” said the 24-year-old. “Children were crying, women were shouting, young and old men were so angry and upset, no one could hear each other. There was no oxygen to breathe.”
After a woman fainted and was carried off the plane, Arifi gave up and returned home.
Kirby said the U.S. was rushing 1,000 troops Monday to help secure the airfield and back up the 2,500 already there. He added that the total intended U.S. deployments to safeguard the evacuations through the airport would remain at 6,000 but gave no other details.
Kirby said late Monday that the U.S. had resumed airlifts out of the airport after suspending them due to the morning's stampedes onto the runways by frightened Afghans.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, warned the Taliban officials Sunday in a face-to-face meeting in Doha, Qatar, that the U.S. military would respond forcefully to defend the airport if necessary, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks not yet announced publicly.
The official said that in the meeting McKenzie and the Taliban agreed to establish a “deconfliction mechanism” — an arrangement by which evacuation operations at the airport could continue without interference by the new rulers of the country.
Late Monday night, hundreds of people remained trapped between American forces trying to push them out of the airport and Taliban forces trying to keep them in, witnesses said. An Associated Press journalist also saw what appeared to be an airstrike target two vehicles near the airport.
Other Afghans, like Rakhmatula Kuyash, are also trying to leave through land border crossings, all of which are now controlled by the Taliban.
“I’m lost and I don’t know what to do,” said Kuyash, who crossed into Uzbekistan on Sunday after leaving his children and relatives in Afghanistan. “I left everything behind.”
Meanwhile, President Ashraf Ghani, who earlier left the country, faced Russian allegations he fled Kabul with four cars and a helicopter full of cash. His whereabouts remained unclear.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear and Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times and by Ahmad Seir, Tameem Akhgar, Kathy Gannon, Jon Gambrell, Joseph Krauss, Rahim Faiez, Edith M. Lederer, Jamey Keaten, Samya Kullab, Daria Litvinova, Robert Burns, James LaPorta, Zeina Karam and Ellen Knickmeyer of The Associated Press.