‘I Inherited a Deal Cut By My Predecessor’: Biden Issues Statement on Afghanistan, as Taliban Control Spreads
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images.
President Joe Biden issued a statement on Sunday regarding the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, reaffirming his administration’s plans and placing blame on the plan he “inherited from [his] predecessor,” former President Donald Trump, and the inability of the Afghan military to hold their own country.
Biden began the statement by describing how he and his national security team were working “to protect our interests and values as we end our military mission in Afghanistan.”
Among the publicly announced plans, Biden mentioned the deployment of approximately 5,000 troops “to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of U.S. personnel and other allied personnel, and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance.”
The government was continuing to work “to process, transport, and relocate Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants and other Afghan allies,” Biden continued. “Our hearts go out to the brave Afghan men and women who are now at risk. We are working to evacuate thousands of those who helped our cause and their families.”
“That is what we are going to do,” Biden wrote. “Now let me be clear about how we got here.”
The president noted how we had gone to Afghanistan 20 years ago “to defeat the forces that attacked this country on September 11th…result[ing] in the death of Osama bin Laden over a decade ago and the degradation of al Qaeda.”
“And yet, 10 years later, when I became President, a small number of U.S. troops still remained on the ground, in harm’s way, with a looming deadline to withdraw them or go back to open combat,” wrote Biden.
America had sent “its finest young men and women,” invested nearly $1 trillion, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, provided state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained the Afghan air force.
However, Biden added, “One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”
“When I came to office,” Biden wrote, “I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. Forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. Forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500.”
Biden faced a choice as his presidency began, to either follow through on the deal, “or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.”
“I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats,” he concluded. “I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”
