Monday, August 16, 2021

Biden says ‘I stand squarely behind my decision’ after Taliban takes Kabul – live

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about the situation in Afghanistan in the East Room of the White House on Monday.

 President Joe Biden delivers remarks about the situation in Afghanistan in the East Room of the White House on Monday. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images


Today so far

Botched Afghanistan withdrawal gives Biden biggest crisis of his presidency

Joe Biden was facing the biggest crisis of his presidency on Monday after the stunning fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban caught his administration flat-footed and raised fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Recriminations were under way in Washington over the chaotic retreat from Kabul, which one Biden opponent described as “the embarrassment of a superpower laid low”.

Bowing to pressure, officials said the president would leave his country retreat, Camp David, to address the nation from the White House on Monday afternoon.

The Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, ending two decades of a failed experiment to import western-style liberal democracy. Diplomatic staff were flown to safety but thousands of Afghans who worked with US forces were stranded and at risk of deadly reprisals.

As harrowing scenes played out on television – including desperate Afghans clinging to a US transport plane before takeoff – the White House scrambled to explain how the government collapsed so quickly.

Last month Biden, pointing to the Afghan military’s superior numbers and technology, predicted: “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

Unrepentant, the president issued a statement on Saturday, insisting the sudden withdrawal had been the only possible choice.

But the response by Biden, who ran for election promising unrivalled foreign policy credentials after 36 years in the Senate and eight as Barack Obama’s vice-president, was jarring to many. A headline in the Washington Post read: “Defiant and defensive, a president known for empathy takes a cold-eyed approach to Afghanistan debacle.”

Read more:

'I stand squarely behind my decision,' Biden says after Taliban takes Kabul

Updated 

Biden acknowledges 'rapid collapse' in Afghanistan after Taliban takes Kabul

Updated 

Updated 

Merkel also noted that her misjudgment had been “widespread,” alluding to the incorrect calculations by other leaders, such as Joe Biden, about how long the Afghan government would be able to stand once US troops withdrew from the country.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/aug/16/us-politics-live-afghanistan-biden-republicans-democrats-latest-news-live

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