Biden strongly defends US withdrawal from Afghanistan

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John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military is looking into moving Afghan translators and their families to US soil, US military facilities outside the United States, and to other countries outside Afghanistan.

The president said the war began two decades ago, not to rebuild a distant country but to prevent terrorist attacks like the one on September 11, 2001 and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. In essence, Biden said the longest war in US history should have ended a decade ago, when bin Laden was killed.

“We didn’t go to Afghanistan to build a country,” he said. It is the right and responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.

Mr. Biden made his remarks even as the democratic government in Kabul teetered under a Taliban siege that has displaced tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and allowed the insurgent group to control much of the country.

He said the rapid US withdrawal is a security issue.

“Our military leaders advised me that once I made the decision to end the war, we need to move quickly to conduct the key elements of withdrawal,” Biden said. “And in this context, speed is safety.”

In an effort to provide limited reassurances to the Afghan government, he said the US mission to help defend the country would continue until August 31, even though most combat troops had already left, leaving a force of less than 1,000 to defend the US Embassy and the US Embassy. state airport.

At another time in the country’s history, Biden’s speech, and the eventual withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, may have shaken politics in the United States.

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