‘Stand squarely behind my decision’, says US President Joe Biden over Afghanistan pullout

Amid the rise of Taliban in Afghanistan as the US is pulling out its troops, US President Joe Biden on Monday said, “I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces.”

Biden, in a televised address from the White House, said that the American troops should not be dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

The US troops went to Afghanistan for 20 years with clear goals, to get those who attacked America on September 11, 2001, for punishing the Taliban for its links with Al Qaeda. He added, “Our mission was never supposed to be nation-building.”

Biden said that ‘thousands’ of American citizens and Afghans, who had worked with the US troops, will be evacuated in the coming days, and also threatened a ‘devastated’ military response if the Taliban launch attacks in the meantime, news agency AFP quoted.

Talking about Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the nation, Biden said Afghan political leaders gave up and Afghan military collapses, sometimes ‘without trying to fight.’

“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them the will to fight for that future,” the 78-year-old said. Talking about the Taliban attack, he said that situation ‘ did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.’

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

Biden said, AFP quoted, that he was “left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: how many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghans — Afghanistan’s civil war — when Afghan troops will not?”