Biden Claims the US Was ‘Ready’ When Afghans ‘Watched Their Own Government Collapse’

President Joe Biden insists that the United States was “ready” when Afghanistan’s security forces and government collapsed. During remarks at the White House after the last American troops left Afghanistan, Biden said…

Bradley Cortright·Aug 31, 2021·2 min read

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Biden has received criticism for the execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan

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Biden Claims the US Was ‘Ready’ When Afghans ‘Watched Their Own Government Collapse’ — IJR

. However, he has

previously defended

the chaotic withdrawal after images surfaced of Afghans clinging to the sides of U.S. military jets to flee the country by arguing that there was never a good time to leave the country.

During his remarks on Tuesday, Biden reiterated his belief the withdrawal could not have been “more orderly.”

“Now some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner, and couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner? I respectfully disagree,” he said. “Imagine if we begun evacuations in June or July, bringing in thousands of American troops and evacuating more than 120,000 people in the middle of a civil war. There still would have been a rush to the airport, a breakdown in confidence and control of the government, and it still would have been a very difficult and dangerous mission.”

He added, “The bottom line is, there is no evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, threats we faced. None.”

While Biden touted the airlift to evacuate Americans and Afghans, he acknowledged that the military was not able to get every American who wanted to leave out but vowed, “We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.”