US President Joe Biden will break his silence on the US fiasco in Afghanistan on Monday with a White House address to the nation as a lightning-bolt victory by the Taliban shook the Democrats’ domestic fortunes.
Biden will shorten his planned vacation and return to Washington from the president’s residence at Camp David and “make comments on Afghanistan” in the East Room of the White House, a statement said.
The address was scheduled for 3:45 p.m. (1945 GMT).
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National security adviser Jake Sullivan previously told ABC that the country “can expect to hear from the president soon. He is currently working actively with his national security team. He is working hard on the situation.”
For the entire weekend, the Democrat, who took office with more foreign policy experience than any new president in decades, stayed in the secluded Camp David.
When breathtaking images played from Kabul, where a hectic US evacuation reflected the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Biden was almost invisible.
His only statement came in writing on Saturday, insisting that the United States’ sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan, which sparked a total takeover by the Taliban, was the only possible choice.
As pressure increased on Biden on Sunday to demonstrate that he was in charge, the White House released a single photo showing the president in a polo shirt sitting alone at a table while listening to advisors on a large monitor.
Biden was elected last year with a promise to bring back expertise and responsibility after Donald Trump’s tumultuous years.
Now the questions are mounting and how Biden’s answers could determine the fate of his presidency.
How could the Afghan army, created, funded and trained by the United States for more than $ 80 billion in 20 years, have struck so quickly against the ragged Taliban?
How could the US, which has been planning its exit for months, at Kabul airport, where Afghans literally cling to US military planes to get out, lead scenes of panic and confusion?
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Why did Biden only last month insist that scenes like this – the dreaded Saigon case scenario, in which desperate people tried to squeeze into the last of the US helicopters – were impossible?
“There will be no circumstance that people from Afghanistan will be lifted from the roof of a US embassy. That is not at all comparable,” he said in the White House.
As New York Times writer and columnist Viet Thanh Nguyen said on Twitter, “After literally going to Saigon to fall Saigon, it definitely looks like Saigon to me.”
Who gets to blame?
Biden had been on a roll until last week. Defying those who say Washington has become too dysfunctional for bipartisan deals, Biden celebrated the passage of its $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by the equally-divided Senate. His Democrats began work on a second, incredibly ambitious, $ 3.5 trillion bill.
And just a few weeks ago, Biden congratulated the Americans on their Covid vaccination rates – an apparent victory over the coronavirus that has now put the emerging Delta variant at risk.
Like the pandemic, Afghanistan was a crisis that Biden inherited.
The US public has long lost interest in the fighting there, and Trump has taken advantage of strong isolationist sentiment to rescue the country from the “stupid” wars that followed 9/11.
Unlike most other matters, Biden agreed with the Republican.
In fact, Biden’s withdrawal is based almost entirely on a plan initiated by Trump himself, which ordered negotiations with the Taliban and, if re-elected, would result in an even earlier exit.
Now, ravaged by allegations of incompetence and treason, the White House is doubling down, insisting that the chaos in Kabul is actually the best of all the bad options available because it will at least stop an unwinnable war.
“The president was not ready to enter a third decade of conflict and deploy thousands more troops – which was his only other choice,” said Sullivan.
“The president had to make the best possible choice and he stands by that decision.”
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