America’s forever war had to end, says Joe
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has made a forceful defence of his “wise” decision to leave Afghanistan, telling Americans he refuses to send another generation to fight in the “forever war”.
The traumatic departure from Afghanistan, completed after 20 years of war against the Taliban, was “a wise decision and the best decision for America”, Mr Biden said in an address to the nation.
After coming under fire from Republican opponents over the chaotic nature of the exit, Mr Biden said he did what should have been done years ago.
“I was not going to extend this forever war and I was not extending a forever exit,” he said, calling the evacuation an “extraordinary success”.
Speaking on national television from the ornate State Dining Room at the White House, Mr Biden thumped the lectern as he detailed the extraordinary costs of a war – including more than 2400 US military deaths and up to $US2.3 trillion spent – that ended back where it started, with the Taliban in power.
“I take responsibility for the decision,” he said. “I made a commitment to the American people that I would end this war. Today, I honoured that commitment.
“After 20 years in Afghanistan, I refused to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war.”
Following two weeks of evacuation flights – a titanic effort marred by a suicide bombing attack that killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans – Mr Biden faces stern criticism that could yet hurt him domestically.
Getting out of the last big post-9/11 war was one of his campaign promises coming into office, and the idea was overwhelmingly popular.
But the US departure, culminating with a solitary plane lifting off at midnight from Kabul with the last troops on board, brought home for many that the so-called “drawdown” really amounted to jarring and humiliating defeat.
Republicans, led by Mr Biden’s bitter predecessor Donald Trump, have painted the exit as a humiliating failure, a defeat that outdoes even the 1975 evacuation from Saigon, and a signal to the world that the US has given up.
“President Biden just said his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was an ‘extraordinary success’,” the Republican Party said in a Twitter statement.
“Thirteen service members were killed. Hundreds of Americans were left abandoned. Billions of dollars in US military equipment is in the hands of the Taliban.”
Mr Biden insisted in his speech that remaining Americans in Afghanistan – many of them dual nationals – would be allowed by the Taliban to get out if they wanted.
Addressing another rising concern, he warned ISIS-K – the Islamic State terror group responsible for the Kabul airport bomb attacks – that they would be hunted down.
And he reached out to those who now oppose American attempts at nation building in hostile countries, saying the Afghanistan withdrawal marked “the end of an era of major military operations to remake other countries”.