Joe Biden addresses the nation on Afghanistan on Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. (Video screenshot)
Interrupting his vacation, President Biden returned to the White House from Camp David on Monday to address the nation regarding the Taliban's swift takeover of Afghanistan upon the U.S. withdrawal, arguing American troops should not be fighting and dying in a war that Afghans aren't willing to fight.
"I stand squarely behind my decision," Biden said. "After 20 years, I've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces."
He deflected responsibility, arguing he's the fourth American president to deal with Afghanistan, which he noted is known as "the graveyard of empires."
On Sunday, the Taliban's takeover of the capital, Kabul, forced Americans to abandon the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Biden said he "inherited" President Trump's deal with the Taliban in which troops would withdraw May 1. 2021.
Under Trump, he said, the U.S. already had drawn down from 15,500 troops to 2,500.
"The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban during the spring fighting season," he said.
There would be no "status quo of stability without American casualities," he said.
'Would have made no difference'
Biden admitted that the current situation "did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated."
But he blamed Afghan leaders, who "gave up and fled the country," and the Afghan military, which "collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight."
"Americans shouldn't fight and die in a war that Afghans aren't willing to fight themselves," he said.
Biden argued he couldn't provide Afghans "with the will to fight," and waiting another year, five years or even 20 "would have made a difference."
He opened his address arguing that America already has achieved its original objective of going after "those who attacked us on 9/11" and making sure al-Qaida could not use Afghanistan as a base.
"Nation building" was not part of the U.S national interest, he argued, which was preventing a terrorist attack on the American homeland.
'We pulled the plug on them'
Retired Gen. Jack Keane, who served as U.S. Army vice chief of staff, said Biden's speech was largely defensive and contained factual errors.
Saying the Afghan army is not up to the fight doesn't tell the whole story, he told Fox News' Neil Cavuto. Since 2014, U.S. forces have provided air support and intelligence to the Afghan army, which has suffered some 50,000 casualties.
That created a "stalemate," Keane said, "that enabled us to protect the American people, making sure al-Qaida could not resurrect itself."
"We pulled the plug on them and they collapsed," he said. "And that's a fact."
Keane also insisted that Biden presented a "false choice."
"No one recommended to him to put in thousands of additional forces," he said. "It was to maintain the 2,500 forces there with air power and intelligence."
Keane noted the bipartisan Afghan Study Group, comprised of Republican and Democratic senators, concluded 4,500 troops was enough to keep al-Qaida from returning to Afghanistan.
See Biden's address:
In July, Biden dismissed fears the American withdrawal would allow the country to fall into the hands of the Taliban, rejecting comparisons to Vietnam and the fall of Saigon.
"The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability," Biden said. "There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy ... of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable."
Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday that American citizens will not be given priority in evacuation over Afghans who have applied for special immmigrant visa) applicants," he told Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich.
Kirby confirmed to Heinrich that the Defense Department will place 30,000 Afghan refugees with special immigrant visas at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Fort Bliss in Texas following the collapse of Kabul.
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