The US President Joe Biden announced Thursday that the US mission in Afghanistan will endways August 31, nearly 20 years after it began, and said, “Taliban takeover of the country isn’t inevitable”.
The US military has “achieved” its goals within the country — killing Osama bin Laden, degrading Al-Qaeda, and preventing more attacks on us, Biden said during a White House speech. “We are ending America’s longest war,” he said. “The established order isn’t an option,” Biden said of staying within the country. “I won’t send another generation of USA citizens to war in Afghanistan. We cannot afford to stay tethered to policies created to reply to a world because it was 20 years ago,” he said. “We got to meet the threats where they’re today.” Biden said us “did not attend Afghanistan to nation-build.” “It is that the right and therefore the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to make a decision their future.” Biden pledged to continue supporting the Afghan government and security forces and said thousands of Afghan translators who worked for US forces and face threats from the Taliban would be ready to find refuge within us. “There may be a home for you within us if you select,” he said. “We will stand with you, even as you stood with us.”
Biden said he was confident the Afghan soldiers could get up to the Taliban, who have made strong advances across the country since the start of the year.”I don’t trust the Taliban,” Biden said, “but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military.” Asked if a Taliban takeover was “inevitable,” the president said: “No, it is not.”He flatly rejected comparisons to the US experience in Vietnam. “The Taliban isn’t the North Vietnamese army,” Biden said. “They´re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. “There´s getting to be no circumstance where you’re getting to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of us from Afghanistan,” he said. “It isn’t in the least comparable.”
