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, “That assumption that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown turned out not to be accurate.”
“But I still instructed our national security team to prepare for every eventuality, even that one. And that’s what we did, so we were ready when Afghan security forces — after two decades of fighting for their country, and losing thousands of their own — did not hold on as long as anyone expected,” he continued.
He added, “We were ready when they, the people of Afghanistan, watched their own government collapse and their president flee amid the corruption and malfeasance, handing over the country to their enemy, the Taliban, and significantly increasing the risk to U.S. personnel and our allies.”
Watch the video below:
BIDEN: "We were ready when the Afghan security forces, after two decades of fighting for their country and losing thousands of their own, did not hold on as long as anyone expected." pic.twitter.com/ulyMLRGpqw
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 31, 2021
Biden has received criticism for the execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 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.”
