CNN NatSec Analyst Calls Biden’s Afghanistan Speech the ‘Worst’ of His Presidency: ‘A Bunch of Malarkey’

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CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen panned President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech and called it the worst of his presidency.

Biden spoke Thursday about the withdrawal of U.S forces from Afghanistan and defended the action, saying, “The United States did what we went to do in Afghanistan: to get the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and deliver justice to Osama bin Laden.”

“The status quo was not an option. Staying would have meant U.S. troops taking casualties; American men and women back in the middle of a civil war,” the president continued.

Bergen wrote Friday Biden’s speech was “peopled with straw men and littered with false assertions.”

First, Biden contended that he was bound by a 2020 Trump administration agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all US troops by May 2021. But that was an agreement conducted by a previous administration — so it’s not binding — and it was predicated on the Taliban breaking with al-Qaeda.

They didn’t, according to the UN in a report released just last month.

It was also predicated on the Taliban engaging with the Afghan government in real peace negations.

He wrote that the US “could have left its 2,500 troops in place in Afghanistan, a force that is less than 10% of the American service personnel in South Korea, to enable the Afghan government to fight the Taliban and its jihadist allies, such as al Qaeda.”

Bergen criticized Biden for a number of other statements he made before concluding, “To use another trademark Biden expression, his Afghanistan speech was a bunch of malarkey.”