President Biden announced Wednesday that all troops in Afghanistan will be withdrawn by September 11, on the anniversary of 9/11, the same day Islamic militants attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, September, 2001.
What Biden said.
Biden’s speech was addressed from the Treaty Room of the White House. “I’m now the fourth United States president to preside over American presence in Afghanistan,” he said. “Two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth. After consulting with our allies and partners, with our military leaders and intelligence personnel, with our diplomats and our development experts, with Congress and the vice president, as well as with Mr. Ghani, and many others around the world, I concluded that it’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home…
“I know there are many who will insist that diplomacy cannot succeed with out a robust military presence to stand as leverage. We gave that argument a decade ago. It’s never proved effective.”
Reactions.
Some Democrats were supportive of the decision. California Representative Ro Khanna, said, “I applaud president Biden for achieving an impossibility here in Washington, ending a forever war. It is an act of extraordinary political courage and vision.”
Others, including GOP leaders, were critical.
“Wars don’t end when one side abandons a fight,” Liz Cheney said in a statement. “Withdrawing our forces by September 11 will only embolden the very Jihadists who attacked our homeland that day twenty years ago. By declaring that this withdrawal is not based on conditions on the ground, the Biden admin. is sending a dangerous signal that the United States does not fundamentally understand – or is willfully ignorant of – the terrorist threat.
“President Biden’s decision hands the Taliban and al-Qaeda a propaganda victory, abandons our global leadership position and plays into our adversaries’ hands. As we saw with president Obama’s reckless decision to pull troops out of Iraq in 2011, retreat does not end the fight against terrorism. It merely gives our enemies more room to reconstitute and plot attacks against the homeland.”
“This administration has decided to abandon US efforts in Afghanistan which have helped keep radical Islamic terrorism in check,” Mitch McConnell said, “and brazenly they have decided to do so by September eleventh.”
Following the speech, Biden visited Arlington National Cemetery, where he told reporters that he had made the right decision.
“I’m always amazed that generation after generation, men and women give their lives to this country,” he said. “It means I have trouble showing up these days to this cemetery and not thinking about my son.”
There is no evidence that a twenty year US presence has kept Islamic terrorist activity in check. Our presence there has done nothing to curb or stop terrorism. All it has accomplished is the needless deaths of 2, 132 American soldiers. It’s time to get out.
The Weekly News 