President Joe Biden on Tuesday said the troop withdrawal from Kabul that left 13 US service members dead was an 'extraordinary success' and blamed Donald Trump and local soldiers for the mess in Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover.
A defiant Biden said the operation couldn't have been done in a 'more orderly manner' and 'respectfully disagreed' with critics who said he should have started the evacuation sooner to avoid the chaos.
The president also hailed the 120,000 people they have gotten to safety in 'one of the biggest airlifts in history', vowed to keep working to get Afghan allies out and said the State Department had reached out to stranded Americans 19 times since March asking if they wanted to leave.
Biden spoke passionately as he defended his actions, at times waving his arms and gripping the podium, amid intense criticism from Democrats, many Republicans and fellow world leaders about his handling of the U.S. drawdown.
Eleven Marines, a Special Forces member and a Navy Corpsman were all killed in the ISIS-K suicide attack last Thursday as US forces frantically tried to get people on evacuation flights before the August 31 deadline.
Thousands of local allies and at least 100 U.S. citizens are still stuck and facing threats from the Taliban. Afghans desperate to leave ran after US planes on the tarmac and two fell out of the skies to their deaths in a bid to escape the rule of the insurgents.
The Taliban have also tightened their grip on Afghanistan and are holding mock funerals for Western troops, reportedly beating female cops and a retired three-star general has warned America's return is 'inevitable'.
In the lengthy remarks, where he refused to take shouted questions from reporters, Biden argued the world was changing and brought up his late son Beau, an Iraq War veteran who died of brain cancer. He cited cyber threats from Russia and China as among the modern concerns America must face.
'Let me be clear. Leaving August 31 is not due to an arbitrary deadline. It was designed to save American lives,' Biden said in his first public remarks since the final US soldier left Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday night.
After, the president took to Twitter to continue his defense of the withdrawal, saying that the US presence in Afghanistan ran counter to US national security interests, and vowed to continue supporting the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence and aid.
'This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It is about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries,' he wrote in a series of tweets.
'The fundamental obligation of a President is to defend America. Not against the threats of 2001, but against the threats of 2021 and tomorrow,' he continued.
'I do not believe the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops in Afghanistan.'
The Taliban celebrated the American withdraw by hosting mock funerals with coffins draped with the US, UK and French flags as well as NATO's insignia. They launched fireworks into the Kabul skyline and flaunted the American weapons and equipment they obtained that U.S. military personnel left behind.
August 31 was the deadline Biden set earlier this year and stuck to despite pleas from some Democratic lawmakers who were veterans and his fellow world leaders, who used a G7 virtual meeting to plead with him to keep boots on the ground longer.
But Biden argued Trump, his predecessor in the Oval Office, tied his hands on the matter. He noted Trump signed a deal with the Taliban to leave by May 1 and that shackled his options.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said the US troop withdrawal from Kabul was an 'extraordinary success' and blamed Donald Trump and local soldiers for the chaos in Afghanistan
Thirteen members of the US military were killed in an ISIS-K suicide attack last Thursday as US forces frantically tried to get people on evacuation flights. Afghans desperate to leave ran after US planes on the tarmac and two fell out of the skies to their deaths in a bid to escape the rule of the insurgents
'My predecessor, the former president, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May 1, just months after I was inaugurated,' he said.
He said that agreement allowed the release of 5,000 prisoners last year. 'including some of the Taliban's top war commanders among those that just took control of Afghanistan.'
'By the time I came to office, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 2001,' Biden said.
He painted the decision to leave as a 'simple' one: 'Either follow-through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan or say we weren't leaving and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war. That was the choice, the real choice.'
'I was not going to extend the war,' Biden said, his voice rising as he spoke.
He defended specific criticism he faced, including questions about the remaining Americans - estimated between 100 to 200 - still in Afghanistan.
He vowed to bring them home.
'For those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out,' he said. Biden told ABC News earlier this month he wouldn't remove U.S. troops until all Americans were home.
He also defended the evacuation after last week's suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. service members and hundreds of Afghan allies.
'We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety.'
He also blamed the Afghan leaders for not doing their part.
After his spoken remarks, Biden took to Twitter Tuesday evening to continue his defense of the withdrawal, and vowed to continue to support the Afghan people through aid and diplomacy
He conceded that he under estimated how long the Afghan government would hang on. The Taliban essentially took control of the country on August 15.
'The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan national security forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban. That assumption that the Afghan government would hold on for a period of time beyond military draw down turned out not to be accurate,' he admitted.
There are reports the Taliban harsh rule has returned. A top Afghan female cop is on the run after suffering a 'brutal beating' from them. She was singled out by the Taliban as a target at the gates outside Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul, where she spent five nights attempting to secure a place on an evacuation flight.
The president pushed back against critics who said the evacuation should have started sooner. He said it would have been chaos no matter when it started.
'I respectfully disagree. Imagine if we begun an evacuation in June or July, bringing 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 of confidence and control of the government and still would have been very difficult and dangerous mission. The bottom line is, there's no evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities and challenges and threats we faced, none,' he said.
He paid tribute to the 'selfless courage' displayed by U.S. service members and diplomatic staff for evacuating Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul.
They 'did their job and did it well,' Biden said.
The president mentioned his trip to Dover over the weekend to witness the return of the service member remains and meet with families. But the White House has refused to discuss the conversations. And there are reports some family members were angry with the president.
Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, told The Washington Post that he showed a picture of his son to Biden and told the president: 'Don't you ever forget that name. Don't you ever forget that face. Don't you ever forget the names of the other 12. And take some time to learn their stories.’
He recalled that Biden didn't seem to like those comments.
'I do know their stories,' Schmitz detailed that the president shot back.
Schmitz also said that a sister of a fallen troop yelled at the president after receiving the remains on Sunday: 'I hope you burn in hell! That was my brother!'
Families of the fallen U.S. service members were left disappointed by Joe Biden at the dignified transfer on Sunday. One sister of a fallen Marine yelled at the president: 'I hope you burn in hell! That was my brother!'
Biden will now have to rely on cooperation with the Taliban (pictured in Kabul on Tuesday) to try and get the remaining Afghan allies and American citizens out
Biden also argued the world was different since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago, shortly after the September 11th attacks.
He said there are new threats America has to deal with.
'We succeeded in what we set out to do in Afghanistan over a decade ago. We stayed for another decade. It was time to end this war. This is a new world,' he said.
'The world is changing. We're engaged in a serious competition with China. We're dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia. We're confronted with cyber attacks and nuclear proliferation,' he said.
'We can do both, fight terrorism and take on new threats that are here now and we'll continue to be here in the future. There's nothing China or Russia rather that, would want more in this competition that on the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan,' he added.
Biden's speech, originally scheduled for 1:30 p.m., was pushed back to 2:45 p.m. and then began shortly before 3:30 p.m.
And Tuesday's speech doesn't mark the end of the Afghan conundrum for the president.
He has to deal with the Taliban take over of the country and relocation of thousands of Afghan refugees in the months to come.
Additionally, Republicans are expected to make it a political issue in the 2022 midterms.
And the president's approval rating has taken a nose dive in the wake of the Afghanistan evacuation and withdrawal. Only 38% of Americans approved of his handling of the situation, according to a ABC News/Ipsos survey released Sunday.
The situation also has hurt Biden's campaign argument that he should be elected for his competence and experience. Some Democrats, many Republicans and foreign allies had pleaded with him to extend the August 31st deadline but the administration argued it would not make a significant difference on the ground there.
Meanwhile, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told ABC's Good Morning America that the U.S. intends to continue sending health, food and other forms of humanitarian aid to the Afghan people.
He also said that other forms of cash aid, including economic and developmental assistance, would depend on whether the Taliban 'follow through on their commitments' including to allow safe passage for Americans still in Afghanistan.
'It's going to be up to them and we will wait and see by their actions how we end up responding in terms of the economic and developmental assistance,' he said.
Sullivan insisted that any aid would flow through 'international institutions' and not directly to the Taliban, however the militant group is now in full control of the country's government and banking system.
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