“Stand Squarely”: Biden Defends ‘Messy’ Afghanistan Pull-Out

Washington: President Joe Biden has said he stands “squarely” behind the US exit from Afghanistan as he faces withering criticism.

“How many more American lives is it worth?” asked the Democratic president.

He said that despite the “messy” pullout, “there was never a good time to withdraw US forces”.

Brushing off criticism that the evacuation is a debacle, he said the priority is to stop a war that had expanded far beyond its initially modest goals of punishing the Taliban for links to Al-Qaeda after 9/11.

“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building,” he said, vowing that despite the departure of US troops anti-terrorism operations would continue.

Biden said “thousands” of US citizens and Afghans who had worked with American forces are to be evacuated over the coming days. He threatened a “devastating” military response if the Taliban launch attacks in the meantime.

While Biden said he took responsibility for the fate of the US mission, he lashed out at the former Afghan government and military commanders who were put in place, organized and supported by Washington over the last 20 years.

Instead of standing up to the advancing Taliban — a highly experienced guerrilla force but more lightly armed than the US-supplied Afghan army — the government fled.

“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them the will to fight for that future,” Biden said.

Partly acknowledging the surprising suddenness of the final Taliban assault, Biden said “this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”

“Our true strategic competitors, China and Russia, would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention into stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely,” he said.

Biden said he was “left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: how many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghans — Afghanistan’s civil war — when Afghan troops will not?”