President Joe Biden speaks about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, in Washington.
US President Joe Biden on Monday addressed the nation about the status of US evacuation from Afghanistan. He warned the Taliban and promised that "response will be swift and forceful" if the terror group attacks US interests. He asked them not to disrupt or threaten the evacuation of thousands of American diplomats and Afghan translators at the Kabul airport. The response to any attack would be "swift and forceful," Biden said in a televised address from the White House.
"We will defend our people with devastating force if necessary," he said. Biden kept emphasizing that he will not repeat the same mistakes again. Talking about America's perspective over Afghanistan, he said, "Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation building, it was never supposed to be creating a unified centralized democracy. Out only intetion in Afghanistan remains what it's always been -- preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland".
A defiant President Joe Biden rejected blame Monday for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Taliban’s easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build.
Staunchly defending his decision on troop pull-out, US President Joe Biden on Monday referred to China and Russia and said "our true strategic competitors" would love nothing more than America funneling billions of dollars in stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely.
"Our true strategic competitors China and Russia would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention in stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely," Biden said in a nationwide address.
At the White House, Biden called the anguish of trapped Afghan civilians “gut-wrenching ” and conceded the Taliban had achieved a much faster takeover of the country than his administration had expected. The U.S. rushed in troops to protect its own evacuating diplomats and others at the Kabul airport.
But the president expressed no second thoughts about his decision to stick by the U.S. commitment, formulated during the Trump administration, to end America’s longest war, no matter what.
“I stand squarely behind my decision” to finally withdraw U.S. combat forces, Biden said, while acknowledging the Afghan collapse played out far more quickly than the most pessimistic public forecasts of his administration. “This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated,” he said.
(Agency Inputs)
