[The president insisted that the United States had done more than enough to empower the Afghan police and military to secure the future of their people.]
By Michael D. Shear, David E. Sanger and Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Speaking after the withdrawal of
nearly all U.S. combat forces and as the Taliban surge across the country, Mr.
Biden, often in blunt and defensive tones, spoke directly to critics of his
order to bring an end to American participation in a conflict born from the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said the United States would formally
end its military mission at the end of August.
“Let me ask those who want us to
stay: How many more?” Mr. Biden said in remarks in the East Room of the White
House. “How many thousands more American daughters and sons are you willing to
risk? And how long would you have them stay?”
Mr. Biden said he was not declaring
“mission accomplished,” but he made clear that the future of the country —
including the fate of the current government and concerns about the rights of
women and girls — was no longer in the hands of the American military.
Responding to questions from
reporters about his decision to bring the war to a close, Mr. Biden grew testy
as he rejected the likelihood that Americans would have to flee from Kabul as
they did from Saigon in 1975. He insisted that the United States had done more
than enough to empower the Afghan police and military to secure the future of
their people.
But he conceded that their success
would depend on whether they had the political will and the military might.
Pressed on whether the broader
objectives of the two-decade effort had failed, Mr. Biden said, “The mission
hasn’t failed — yet.”
The president also insisted that
the United States had not abandoned the thousands of Afghans who served as
translators or provided other assistance to the American military. Responding
to critics who argue his administration is not moving quickly enough to protect
them, Mr. Biden said evacuations were underway and promised those Afghans that
there was “a home for you in the United States, if you so choose. We will stand
with you, just as you stood with us.”
John F. Kirby, a Pentagon
spokesman, said the military was looking at relocating Afghan interpreters and
their families to U.S. territories, American military installations outside the
United States, and in other countries outside of Afghanistan.
The war began two decades ago, the
president argued, not to rebuild a distant nation but to prevent terror attacks
like the one on Sept. 11, 2001 and to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. In
essence, Mr. Biden said the longest war in United States history should have
ended a decade ago, when Bin Laden was killed.
“We did not go to Afghanistan to
nation-build,” he said. “And it’s the right and the responsibility of Afghan
people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”
Mr. Biden delivered his remarks
even as the democratic government in Kabul teeters under a Taliban siege that
has displaced tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and allowed the insurgent
group to capture much of the country.
The rapid American withdrawal, he
said, was a matter of safety.
“Our military commanders advised me
that once I made the decision to end the war, we needed to move swiftly to
conduct the main elements of the drawdown,” Mr. Biden said. “And in this
context, speed is safety.”
In an effort to provide limited
reassurance to the Afghan government, he said the American mission to help
defend the country would continue through Aug. 31, though most combat troops
have already left, leaving a force of under 1,000 to defend the American
embassy and the country’s airport.
At another time in the country’s
history, Mr. Biden’s speech, and the final withdrawal of troops from
Afghanistan, might have roiled politics in the United States.
But at a moment when Americans are
still fighting Covid, searching for a way out of 18 months of economic
disruption, and struggling with racial tension and political division, there is
almost no debate about the wisdom of the drawdown among Democrats and Republicans
in Congress. Polls show that large numbers of Americans in both parties support
leaving Afghanistan.
For years, Mr. Biden, in wanting to
withdraw from Afghanistan, was on the losing side of the debate. In 2009, while
serving as vice president, he argued for a minimal force, only to be overruled
as President Barack Obama ordered a surge of forces, then a rapid drawdown. But
a dozen years later, as president, he has found his moment.
Progressives who once warmed to the
idea of educating Afghan girls and women are now more interested in rebuilding
America than Afghanistan. Conservatives have largely given up on former
President George W. Bush’s pledge to spread democracy around the world and
instead embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” opposition
to what he saw as endless wars.
In his remarks on Thursday, and in
his answers to questions, Mr. Biden delivered a presidential version of “I told
you so” about the war.
“In 2011, NATO allies and partners
agreed that we would end our combat mission in 2014,” he said. “In 2014, some
argued one more year. So we kept fighting and kept taking casualties. In 2015
the same. And on and on.”
Now, he said, the experience of two
decades of war reveals that “just one more year of fighting in Afghanistan is
not a solution, but a recipe for being there indefinitely.”
America’s allies have accepted Mr.
Biden’s decision. On Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain
announced the end of his country’s mission in Afghanistan, echoing Mr. Biden’s
assessment that it was time for an end to the global military effort.
The president’s speech, which came
just days after U.S. forces pulled out of Bagram Air Base, the operations
center of the 20-year war, was the latest acknowledgment that the United States
could not alter the country’s course.
But questions remain about whether
his promise that the United States would retain an “over the horizon”
capability to back up the Afghan forces amounts to a real security guarantee.
Any operation would almost certainly need approval from Defense Secretary Lloyd
J. Austin III or Mr. Biden himself.
“No nation has ever unified
Afghanistan, no nation. Empires have gone there and not done it,” Mr. Biden
said in a reference to the British occupation of the country in the 19th
century and the Soviet effort to gain control three decades ago. Both efforts
failed, and Mr. Biden was, in essence, adding the United States to the list.
In February 2020, the Trump
administration announced an agreement with the Taliban that they advertised as
a pathway to peace. But it hinged on a power-sharing agreement between the
Taliban and the Afghan government that never materialized. And now, the
situation on the ground is deteriorating so rapidly that the Taliban’s
territorial gains grow by the day.
Tens of thousands of civilians have
been displaced, provincial capitals are under siege and in some cases, Afghan
troops have fled into neighboring Tajikistan. A third wave of the coronavirus
has also pushed the country’s impoverished health care system to the brink.
Peace talks in Qatar between the
Taliban and the Afghan government have all but stalled, despite occasional
meetings between both sides.
The Afghan government is
increasingly isolated. President Ashraf Ghani has shuffled his security cabinet
with hopes that a new military strategy could help protect the country’s most
important cities. Kabul, the country’s capital, is dealing with rolling power
outages and growing lines at the passport office, highlighting the Taliban’s
growing proximity.
In a nod to the ongoing
instability, Mr. Biden said he intended for the United States to remain engaged
in diplomatic efforts and to support the Afghan government with money and
supplies even after all U.S. troops have left.
“We will continue to provide
civilian and humanitarian assistance, including speaking out for the rights of
women and girls,” he said. “I intend to maintain our diplomatic presence in
Afghanistan.”
But since the United States
officially began its withdrawal in May, Afghan troops have surrendered in the
hundreds, forfeiting troves of U.S.-supplied equipment.
On Wednesday, Taliban forces
entered a key city in the country’s northwest, freeing more than 100 prisoners
there and nearly taking the capital of Badghis Province — Qala-e-Naw —
until Afghan commandos and air support pushed the insurgents to its periphery.
The Taliban seem intent on pushing
for an outright military victory. And no matter what the accord negotiated 17
months ago said about power sharing, the Taliban now present
themselves as a comparable governing body as they seize territory and
revive their hard-line Islamist rules.
Still, Mr. Biden said on Thursday that
he did not believe a Taliban takeover of the government was inevitable and he
bristled when a reporter asked if he trusted the Taliban.
“That’s a silly question,” he
snapped. “Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan
military, who is better trained, better equipped and more competent in terms of
conducting war.”
Many other important issues remain
unresolved. The administration is still working out plans to help maintain from
afar the Afghan Air Force and the military’s Black Hawk helicopter fleet.
The Afghan Air Force, in
particular, is heavily reliant on American and other foreign contractors for
repairs, maintenance, fueling, training and other jobs necessary to keep it
operating. About 200 of the original 18,000 Pentagon contractors remain in the
country. Most contractors departed along with the American military, leaving a
void that U.S. and Afghan leaders say could be crippling to Afghan forces as
they face the Taliban alone.
Michael D.
Shear and David E. Sanger reported from Washington,
and Thomas Gibbons-Neff from Kabul. Farnaz
Fassihi contributed reporting from New York, and Eric
Schmitt from Washington.
Michael D. Shear is a veteran White
House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was a member of team
that won the Public Service Medal for Covid coverage in 2020. He is the
co-author of “Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration.” @shearm
David E. Sanger is a White House
and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The
Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently
in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon:
War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a
correspondent in the Kabul bureau and a former Marine infantryman. @tmgneff
