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Mr Biden’s defence

Palpably enough, the remnants of the American force have been caught with their pants down as indeed has Afghanistan’s internal security network.

Mr Biden’s defence

President Joe Biden speaks as he receives a briefing in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington.

President Joe Biden has offered a somewhat strained defence of what he calls the USA’s ‘messy’ pullout from Afghanistan. His feeble defence of a catastrophe comes in the immediate aftermath of the withering criticism of the Taliban’s lightning conquest of the embattled country. Palpably enough, the remnants of the American force have been caught with their pants down as indeed has Afghanistan’s internal security network.

The outlook is grim and Sunday’s capture of Kabul has reaffirmed the fragility of security. “How many more American lives is it worth?” asked the Democratic President. He said that despite the “messy” pull-out, “there was never a good time to withdraw US forces”.

Last Sunday, the Taliban declared victory after President Ashraf Ghani fled and his government collapsed. The militants’ return to rule brings an end to almost 20 years of a US-led coalition’s presence in the country. Mr Biden returned to the White House on Monday from the Camp David presidential retreat to make his first public remarks on Afghanistan in nearly a week.

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“If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” said Mr Biden. “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.”

President Biden is facing intense political backlash over the turmoil in Kabul following his decision to order all American troops out of Afghanistan by 11 September ~ the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks that triggered the US invasion.

Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate Minority Leader, tweeted: “What we are seeing in Afghanistan is an unmitigated disaster.” This is the core issue that the US President has rather deftly avoided. At another remove, the former US President, George Bush, who had authorised the military intervention in 2001, said he was “watching the tragic events unfolding in Afghanistan with deep sadness”.

Mr Biden said the US mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been about nation-building. He recalled that when he was VicePresident he had opposed the 2009 deployment of thousands of additional troops into the country by President Barack Obama. He noted he had inherited a deal negotiated with the Taliban under President Trump for the US to withdraw from Afghanistan by May this year.

There is little doubt that his policy on Afghanistan has been nothing short of calamitous and he is acutely aware of the inherent dangers. Mr Biden said he was now the fourth US President to preside over America’s longest war, and would not pass the responsibility on to a fifth.

“I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference.” Mr Biden, it bears recall, had campaigned as a seasoned expert in foreign policy and declared after assuming office this year that “America is back”. Many of his fellow citizens though seem to disapprove of his actions in Afghanistan.

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