President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan on Monday amid the collapse of the country’s government.
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building,” Biden, speaking from the East Room of the White House, said in a televised national address. “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.”
BIDEN: AFGHAN COLLAPSE HAPPENED ‘MORE QUICKLY THAN WE ANTICIPATED’
The president additionally argued that he is focusing “on the threats we face today in 2021, not yesterday’s threats.”
“Today, a terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan,” he continued. “Al Shabab in Somalia, Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establish affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources.”
Biden additionally touched on the peace agreement his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, negotiated with the Taliban and the Afghan government, which hinged on the United States pulling all troops out of the country.
“There was only a cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict,” he continued. “I stand squarely behind my decision.”
Biden did concede that the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul “did unfold more quickly than we anticipated.”
He specifically blamed ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who visited Biden at the White House over the summer, for convincing him that Afghan security forces would fight back against Taliban incursions, which proved “obviously wrong.”
“I know my decision will be criticized,” the president reiterated. “But I’d rather take all that criticism than pass this decision on to another president.”
“The buck stops with me,” he said in closing.
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You can watch his remarks in full below.
