“We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history … That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible. He called the evacuation mission an “extraordinary success”, saying the US has airlifted more than 120,000 people out of the country. ‘Extraordinary success’īiden also defended the way the withdrawal was carried out – despite scenes of chaos at the airport in Kabul. “There’s nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan,” he said. On Tuesday, Biden argued that the Afghanistan exit was in Washington’s strategic interests as the US shifts its foreign policy to focus on global competition with China and Russia. “We made foreign policy based on an emotional slogan, and it has made America less safe, not more safe.” “They love the slogan ‘no more endless wars,'” he said. The Taliban took over Afghanistan in a blitz earlier this month, reaching Kabul on August 15 as President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and government forces collapsed.Īlmost immediately after the Pentagon announced on Monday that the last US flight had left Afghanistan, Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy rallied GOP veterans in Congress to rebuke Biden.Ĭongressman Dan Crenshaw, a war veteran who fought in Afghanistan, accused the administration of surrendering the country to the Taliban against Washington’s national security interests. “I’m certainly of the view that we maintain a military presence as long as it’s necessary to get all US persons out and to meet our moral and ethical obligation to our Afghan partners,” Adam Schiff, a Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier this month. But Taliban officials had warned of “consequences” if the US military did not fully withdraw as scheduled.Īfter a virtual Group of Seven (G7) meeting last week, European Council President Charles Michel said the European Union stressed to Washington “the need to secure the airport as long as necessary to complete the operations” – a call echoed by many US lawmakers, including several from Biden’s own Democratic Party. Members of the US Congress and Washington’s European allies had urged the president to extend the evacuation operation at the airport past the end of the month. “The decision to end the military lift operations at Kabul airport was based on unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisers.”
“I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit,” he said. It was designed to save American lives,” he said.īiden cited his predecessor Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban that ensured the withdrawal, but took responsibility for the final decision to pull all US troops out of the country. “Let me be clear: leaving August 31 is not due to an arbitrary deadline. Speaking in a firm tone from the White House on Tuesday, Biden said keeping US troops in control of the airport in the Afghan capital beyond an August 31 withdrawal deadline would have exposed them to heightened security risk. "Once it was determined that there was nothing else they could do, they covered her body with a sheet (but not her face) and the flight carried on as per normal.Less than 24 hours after the last United States military flight left Kabul, President Joe Biden mounted a defiant defence of the withdrawal, saying it was “the right decision” to end the US’s 20-year military presence in Afghanistan.
"The woman's immediate neighbours were allocated new seats as they lay her across the row of seats. Meanwhile Ana Ansari said: "A woman sitting two rows behind me on an 11 hour flight from Frankfurt to Singapore had stopped breathing on the last leg of the trip. Medics met the family at Dubai where he was pronounced dead. Last year, a 36-year-old dad died while travelling from New Zealand to the UK with his wife and two young children.
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