President Joe Biden defended his decision to end the insane Afghanistan war in an interview Aug. 18 with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. Despite the normal stammering and occasional confusion, Biden made several cogent and truthful statements, in sharp contrast to the hysterical coverage by all U.S. media, from Fox to CNN to PBS, which are lying about the actual situation on the ground and denouncing Biden’s handling of the pullout. Unfortunately there was no discussion of reconstruction.
Some useful quotes:
BIDEN: I had a simple choice. If I had said, “We’re going to stay,” then we’d better prepare to put a whole hell of a lot more troops in —
STEPHANOPOULOS: But your top military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.
BIDEN: No, they didn’t. It was split. Tha— that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true….
The reason why it’s been stable for a year is because the last President said, “We’re leaving. And here’s the deal I wanna make with you, Taliban. We’re agreeing to leave if you agree not to attack us between now and the time we leave on May the 1st.".... There is no good time to leave Afghanistan. Fifteen years ago would’ve been a problem, 15 years from now. The basic choice is am I going to send your sons and your daughters to war in Afghanistan in perpetuity?... We spent over $1 trillion, George, 20 years. There was no good time to leave….
STEPHANOPOULOS:: They thought the Taliban would take over, but not this quickly?
BIDEN: But not this quickly. Not even close…. What we did was took precautions. That’s why I authorized that there be 6,000 American troops to flow in to accommodate this exit, number one. And number two, provided all that aircraft in the Gulf to get people out. We prepositioned all that, anticipated that. Now, granted, it took two days to take control of the airport. We have control of the airport now.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Still a lotta pandemonium outside the airport.
BIDEN: Oh, there is. But no one’s being killed right now, God forgive me if I’m wrong about that, but no one’s being killed right now…. One of the things we didn’t know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out, what they would do. What are they doing now? They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, etc.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You talked about our adversaries, China and Russia. You already see China telling Taiwan, “See? You can’t count on the Americans.” (LAUGH)
BIDEN: Why wouldn’t China say that? There’s a fundamental difference between Taiwan [and] South Korea, NATO…. We made a sacred commitment to Article Five, that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with—[but] Taiwan, it’s not even comparable to talk about that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah, but those—
BIDEN: It’s not comparable to t— [note: some press misinterpreted this to claim Biden was including Taiwan under an Article Five-type agreement, to assure defense if invaded. He was saying the opposite — that Taiwan was “not comparable.”]
We’re going to be putting together a group of the G7, the folks that we work with the most. I was on the phone with Angela Merkel today. I was on the phone with the British prime minister. I’m going to be talking to Macron in France to make sure we have a coherent view of how we’re going to deal from this point on.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What happens now in Afghanistan? Do you believe the Taliban have changed?
