Washington, DC—President Biden defended his decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan in his address to the nation today in the aftermath of the collapse of Afghan government and the re-takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban.
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.:
“We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,” Biden said. “We did that. We severely degraded al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and we got him.”
Biden slammed the political leaders of Afghanistan for the unexpectedly quick fall of their government.
“Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” said Biden.
“If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” Biden continued. “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.”
