President Joe Biden spoke Tuesday afternoon in defense of the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, particularly the criticism that his administration should have begun those evacuations much sooner.
The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan roughly 24 hours before the president spoke, marking the end of the 20-year war. Thousands of Americans and U.S. allies were evacuated over the past few weeks, but the president and top military leaders have acknowledged that were are up to 200 Americans still there.
He commended the service of the U.S. service members who helped evacuations, particularly the 13 who were killed in an attack at the Kabul airport.
Biden defended the progress the U.S. made and said his administration is committed to getting out everyone else who wants to leave.
At one point during his speech, the president stated, “I take responsibility for the decision.”
He went on to defend not starting evacuations sooner, amid the serious weeks-long outcry that his administration waited too long:
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. 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.
“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,” Biden added.
On July 30th, Politico reported that lawmakers from both parties were frustrated at the Biden administration’s “failure” to “sufficiently prepare for the avalanche of visa applications and the need to quickly evacuate those Afghans from the country as the Taliban make steady territorial gains.”
You can watch above, via CNN.