In his address, The American president regretted the current situation, but “firmly” defended his decision to withdraw American troops and threatened the Taliban with the use of force if they disrupted the evacuations. President Joe Biden rejected blame Monday for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Taliban’s easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build.
“After 20 years, I have reluctantly learned that there is never a good time to withdraw US forces. I am deeply saddened, but I do not regret my decision,” the US president said to the nation. “The truth is that this all happened faster than we expected,” he conceded from the White House.
“I stand squarely behind my decision” to finally withdraw U.S. combat forces, Biden said, while acknowledging the Afghan collapse played out far more quickly than the most pessimistic public forecasts of his administration. “This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated,” he said.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said late Monday that the U.S., which had taken charge of air traffic control at the Kabul airport, had resumed airlifts out, after suspending them due to the morning’s stampedes onto the runways by frightened Afghans.
Kirby said U.S. forces are planning to wrap up their oversight of the evacuation by Aug. 31, also the date Biden has set for officially ending the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: chaos and despair at Kabul airport
A crowd of Afghans has swarmed into Kabul’s international airport, preventing evacuation flights from taking off. The Afghan capital is in the hands of the Taliban, who patrol the strangely quiet streets.
Emmanuel Macron plays the balancing act
During his speech on Monday evening, the President of the Republic responded to the left, which is calling for a humanitarian bridge, and to the right, which is warning him against any “angelism”.
He recalled that France was militarily engaged in Afghanistan for 13 years, from 2001 to 2014. Alongside the United States, the country had “a clear objective: to fight a terrorist threat that was directly targeting our territory and that of our allies”, explained the President of the Republic before affirming: “In Afghanistan, our fight was just and it is the honour of France to have committed itself to it”. “France has only ever had one enemy there: terrorism,” he insisted, refuting the idea that this kind of intervention was intended to replace the sovereignty of peoples or, as Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF) and presidential candidate, said, to “satisfy the interests of power [of the United States and its armed wing, NATO]. “We will not forget our soldiers. We will not forget our dead. Ninety in total”, concluded the head of state, solemn.
The leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have criticized the presence of France in “wars without a way out. “Everything was highly predictable from day one,” wrote the leader of LFI, a presidential candidate, in his blog on Monday evening evoking his “disgust for those who have led events to this point.”
