Biden Declares War Over, Shifts Blame for Botching Withdrawal | RealClearPolitics
Almost exactly 24 hours after the last cargo plane carrying Americans lumbered down the Kabul airport runway, President Biden started walking. He exited the Oval Office, passed through the Cross Hall of the White House, and entered the State Dining Room. He arrived with a full head of steam, and he was there to say that the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, was over.
In remarks that lasted roughly half an hour, Biden took full responsibility for the decision to end the war while, at the same time, pushing responsibility onto others for how it ended.
He blamed former President Trump for signing an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May 1, an agreement that released 5,000 prisoners some of the Taliban s top war commanders among those who just took control of Afghanistan.
He blamed a corrupt Afghan government for letting its armies fold and leaving its people to watch their president flee amid the corruption of malfeasance, handing over the country to their enemy.
He blamed, or at very least appeared to chastise, any American stranded there for not leaving earlier, noting that since March, we reached out 19 times to Americans in Afghanistan with multiple warnings and offers to help them leave Afghanistan all the way back as far as March.
Biden again fell back on a familiar binary that his White House has relied on since the situation started going haywire two weeks ago. He said the United States could honor the commitment Trump made to the Taliban or recommit itself, and her sons and daughters, to the war. That was the choice, the real choice between leaving or escalating, he insisted. I was not going to extend this forever war.
But the president did not discuss the promise he had broken. In an Aug. 19 interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, he had been unequivocal when he twice stated his commitment to getting every American who wanted to leave the country out of Afghanistan before U.S. forces left.