WASHINGTON — President Biden touted his infamous decision to end the American military presence in Afghanistan during an end-of-term foreign policy speech Monday, saying he “saw no reason to keep thousands of servicemen” there — despite top generals warning him against the move.
“Today, I can also report to the American people [as] the first president in decades who’s not leaving a war in Afghanistan to his successor,” the 82-year-old boasted at the State Department, arguing that “the primary objective of war had been accomplished” when SEAL Team Six took out Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden during a daring Pakistan raid in 2011.
“I believe[d] that going forward, the primary threat of Al Qaeda would no longer be emanating from Afghanistan, but from elsewhere, and so we did not need to station sizeable number[s] of American forces in Afghanistan,” added the president, admitting that he “had a choice” on whether to keep the troops there.
“In my view, it was time to end the war and bring our troops home, and we did.”
But that view was heartily opposed by Biden’s top military advisers — including then-Chief of the Joint Staff Mark Milley — who predicted the rapid downfall of the Afghan government unless the US kept at least 2,500 troops in country.
Those warnings proved true on Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban — which the US-led invasion had ousted from power two decades before — took Kabul even before the last US troops left the country.
Since then, the Taliban has been enforcing oppressive policies on the Afghan people — including banning women from speaking in public — and siphoning foreign funding away from humanitarian efforts and into their own pockets while striving to become recognized by the international community
The Taliban’s return was largely viewed in the US veteran community as a slap in the face to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of American service members during the 20 years of war.
But Biden made no mention of the repercussions of his decision Monday, instead patting himself on the back for the US no longer “spending hundreds of millions of dollars a day” on Afghanistan.
”By ending the war, we’ve been able to focus our energy and resources on our urgent challenges,” he said. “There’s nothing — I can tell you from my conversation both [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin — nothing our adversaries and competitors like Russia and China would have liked more than to have seen us to continue to be tied down in Afghanistan for another decade.
“For all those reasons, ending the war was the right thing to do, and I believe history will reflect that.”
Biden also failed to mention the Aug. 26, 2021, ISIS-K suicide attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate, which killed 13 service members and hundreds of Afghans attempting to flee the fundamentalist Taliban.
The president briefly mentioned “those brave service members whose lives were lost during the withdrawal” — but did not go into further detail.
“I commend the courage of all those who served in Afghanistan,” he said. “We grieve all 2,461 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the longest war in American history.’
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who led a House investigation into the withdrawal as chair of the chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that Biden “once again touted his botched Afghanistan withdrawal as a victory — claiming it did not damage our alliances nor create a haven for terrorism.
“Those are bold-faced lies,” McCaul added. “The withdrawal telegraphed US weakness around the world and resulted in the release of thousands of ISIS terrorists from the prisons at Bagram.
“Joe Biden’s presidency will forever be marred by foreign policy blunders that lit the world on fire. To pretend otherwise is an insult to the American people.”
The Foreign Affairs Committee’s bombshell 2024 report on the withdrawal found that Biden had dismissed the concerns of countless officials and US allies when he ignored withdrawal conditions agreed to by the first Trump administration in the Doha Agreement, “pleas by the Afghan government, and objections by US allies when he made the unilateral decision to withdraw.”
House Republican Caucus Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) also blasted Biden’s self-congratulatory remarks, saying in a post to X that “America is WEAKER — not stronger because of Joe Biden.”
“America is MOCKED — not feared,” she wrote, adding: “In seven days, President Trump will reverse Biden’s destruction and make America respected again.”
