Washington- Announcing the end of a two-decade war that saw 2,300 killed and 775,000 American soldiers serve, President Joe Biden stated that all United States forces would come home from Afghanistan by September 11, the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that started the conflict.
“It is time to end the nation’s longest war,” the President said in a speech from the White House Treaty Room, where George W. Bush announced the initial airstrikes in Afghanistan. It was in 2001.
President Joe Biden said the United States had achieved its prime objective of ensuring Afghanistan won’t remain a base of terrorists from which they can attack the U.S. again.
He added, the U.S. must move its focus to target terrorism threats that “have become more metastasized and dispersed around the globe.”
“We gave justice to Bin Laden ten years ago, and we’ve stayed in Afghanistan ten years since then,” he said, pointing to the 2011 assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the one-time captain of the al-Qaida terrorist group. “Since then, our cause for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly vague.”
A report on Tuesday gave a stark outlook for peace in Afghanistan if the United States withdraws, anticipating the Taliban is “likely to acquire the battlefield, and the Afghan administration will strive to hold the Taliban.”
Biden tried to counter criticism from Democrats and some Republicans who say U.S. objectives- including former civil rights gains by Afghani women under the Taliban reign- could be lost if the United States withdraws too soon. Trump faced similar criticism for his planned military withdrawal.
