(Headline USA) President Joe Biden continues to defend his disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan in conversations with aides and administration officials, insisting he made the right decisions.
According to an excerpt from the new book The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump,” Biden has been privately defiant ever since the botched withdrawal led to the deaths of 13 U.S. soldiers.
The reason no one resigned after the week-long chaos was “In large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake,” wrote author Alexander Ward, according to Axios. “Ending the war was always going to be messy.”
Biden allegedly told his top aides, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, that they had done their best given the situation and vowed to stand by them.
“There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up,” one White House official told Ward.
His refusal to acknowledge the mistakes his administration made comes despite the fact that Biden knew he could not keep his promise to get all American citizens and allies out of Afghanistan, Ward said.
After he said on Aug. 18, 2021, that he would keep troops on the ground until every U.S. citizen had an opportunity to leave, a White House official told Ward, “There’s no one here who thinks we can meet that promise.”
Ultimately, Biden withdrew the last U.S. troops from the region, leaving more than 800 American citizens stranded.
Biden has also publicly refused to apologize for the botched withdrawal.
“We spent over $1 trillion over 20 years. We trained and equipped with modern equipment over 300,000 Afghan forces,” Biden said at a news conference in 2021. “And Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands, we lost to death and injury, thousands of American personnel. They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation.”
