US President Joe Biden on Monday defended his administration’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, blaming Afghan political leaders and US-trained Afghan army for the Taliban’s takeover in Kabul.
The Taliban seized control of Kabul on Sunday following President Ashraf Ghani’s departure from the country, bringing an abrupt end to the 20-year U.S. effort to restructure the Afghan government and its military.
Speaking to the American public from the White House, Biden blamed the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan on Afghan military and political leadership who fled the country and the unwillingness of the Afghan Army to fight against the Taliban fighters.
“Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country; the Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” Biden said.
“We gave them every chance to determine their own future but we could not provide them with the will to fight for that future,” the US president added.
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building or establishing a stable democracy in the country.”
As the Taliban took hold of the country, Democrats on Capitol Hill and former Obama administration officials joined Republicans in publicly criticizing Biden’s handling of the situation. While most agreed with the decision to remove troops, they attacked Biden’s failure to help the thousands of Afghans who assisted U.S. forces over the 20-year war effort exit the country before the Taliban took over, and the scramble to evacuate Americans from the country.
Rejecting harsh criticism of his Afghan policy from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, some former generals and human rights groups, Biden firmly defended his withdrawal from a 20-year war that endured through four presidencies.
“I stand squarely behind my decision,” the president said on Monday. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”
“If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. So I am left again to ask of those who argue 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?” He added.
However, he acknowledged that the Taliban’s speed in retaking the country was unexpected. The US president, however, could not explain how the Taliban were so easily able to take control and destabilize the Afghan forces that the US has poured billions of dollars and two decades into training.
“The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,” Biden said Monday, insisting that his administration was prepared for all scenarios but the Afghan government and military were unwilling to defend their own country.