Biden press conference afghanistan7/26/2023 It seemed Biden was under a different impression last month when he said he had confidence the Afghan army might be able to hold its own, a sentiment echoed by many military experts. And over the past few years, the Taliban has been gaining ground….Withdrawing was tantamount to giving the Taliban the keys." ![]() The Afghan government is seen as a stooge. "It was very obvious what was going to happen," says Max Abrahms, a professor at Northeastern University and an expert in international security. It's true that some of the chaos in Afghanistan was inevitable. The largest news organizations are publicly pleading for the government to help rescue their people. citizens and Afghans alike-have gone into hiding as they attempt to avoid a similar fate, frantically trying to contact the American government in the hopes that someone can find them before the Taliban does. ![]() Those who didn't make it to the airport-U.S. One such report notes that, two days ago, an Afghan interpreter was hung in the streets, his arms severed and his Department of Defense ID card burned into his chest. Some say the militant group is going door to door looking for traitors to the regime, and reports are already surfacing of public executions. ![]() are now under threat of near-certain death at the hands of the Taliban. Videos show a besieged airport in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, where people have been falling from the sky after trying to hold on to planes as they took flight. soldiers and filled other critical roles in service to the Americans-knowing that they did so at risk of Taliban reprisal. That program was created by Congress to give an immigration pathway to Afghans-those who translated for U.S. But it stops far short of explaining why, for example, 18,000 special immigrant visa (SIV) applications were languishing in a web of red tape far before the withdrawal began. That sounds fair enough: The situation is undoubtedly more complex than meets the eye. Part of it is because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence." "Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. "I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating civilians sooner," he said yesterday. Biden was confident, assured, and full of humility, wrote Reason's Eric Boehm.īut the president failed to fully grapple with the execution, which, most notably, has seen thousands of Afghans stranded after they risked their lives to help the U.S. More than two-thirds of Americans want an end to the war in Afghanistan. presidents, even as the war on terror has lost support. The speech took several pages from the anti-war playbook-rare rhetoric in the context of recent U.S. Though the optics are messy, his decision to pull troops was the right one, he said. The two are not mutually exclusive.īiden's address made the case against nation building and regime change wars. Yet in our hyper-polarized political landscape, we sometimes forget there's room for more than two camps, and that applies here: It is possible to champion our troop removal while criticizing the way it was done. It's a speech that drew plaudits from anti-war advocates and scorn from the hawks. executive: In a press conference, he stuck by his promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. President Joe Biden on Monday did something unexpected for a U.S.
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