Biden breaks silence, says leaving Afghanistan was the right decision

US President Joe Biden said on Monday night that the developments of the past week have reinforced that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan was the right decision.

He said Washington’s mission in Afghanistan “was never supposed to have been nation building” nor was it aimed at creating a unified, centralized democracy.

Addressing a press conference at the White House, Biden said: “Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.”

He said “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”

“We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong — incredibly well equipped — a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.

“We gave them every tool they could need. We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force.

“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future,” Biden said.

Biden said when he hosted former president Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the high council for national reconciliation, in June, he had a frank discussion with them about cleaning up the corruption in government and the about Afghan leaders uniting politically.

“We talked about how Afghanistan should prepare to fight their civil wars after the U.S. military departed,” he said.

“They failed to do any of that,” he added.

“I also urged them to engage in diplomacy, to seek a political settlement with the Taliban. This advice was flatly refused. Mr. Ghani insisted the Afghan forces would fight, but obviously he was wrong,” Biden said.

He went on to say that he is clear on his decision. “I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past — the mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States, of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country, of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of U.S. forces.

“Those are the mistakes we cannot continue to repeat, because we have significant vital interests in the world that we cannot afford to ignore.”

He said the US will continue to support the Afghan people. “We will lead with our diplomacy, our international influence, and our humanitarian aid.

“We’ll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability.

“We’ll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people — of women and girls — just as we speak out all over the world,” he said.