“We cannot continue the cycle of expanding or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan in the hope of creating the ideal conditions for our withdrawal, awaiting a different outcome,” Biden said.
“I am now the fourth U.S. president to preside over a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats,” he added. “I will not pass that responsibility on to a fifth.”
In a sign that considers his statements a book of history for the protracted conflict, he delivered them precisely from the same place in the White House Treaty Room that President George W. Bush announced the start of the war on October 7, 2001. We will then visit the Arlington National Cemetery section, where many of the dead from the U.S. war in Afghanistan are buried.
Biden will say U.S. diplomatic and humanitarian efforts will continue in Afghanistan and support peace efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But it will be unequivocal that two decades after it begins, the war in Afghanistan will end.
“It’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to return home,” he said.
Biden said the withdrawal will begin on May 1, according to the deal the President Donald Trump administration made with the Taliban. He said the full withdrawal will take place before 9/11.
The term set by Biden is absolute, with no possibility of extension depending on the worsening of the ground conditions. Officials said that after two decades of war, the president was clear that throwing more time and money into Afghanistan’s problems would not work.
“This is not based on conditions,” a senior administration official heavily involved in the deliberations said on Tuesday. “The president has judged that a conditions-based approach, which has been the focus of the last two decades, is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever.”
Some U.S. troops will remain to protect U.S. diplomats, though officials declined to provide an accurate number.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Wednesday that he had spoken to Biden and that he “respects the US decision.”
“Afghanistan’s proud security and defense forces are fully capable of defending its people and its country, which they have been doing all along, and which the Afghan nation will continue to be grateful for forever,” Ghani told Twitter.
A deliberative process
Biden has spent months weighing his decision and waging a war in Afghanistan that killed some 2,300 soldiers and cost more than $ 2 trillion that no longer fit the urgent foreign policy concerns of 2021.
This also happened with Biden’s two most recent predecessors, who tried to withdraw from Afghanistan just to leave security behind and try to prop up the government. Biden has made a different calculation that the United States and the world must move forward.
Biden said he spoke with former President George W. Bush on Tuesday before announcing his decision to withdraw troops.
“I spoke with President Bush yesterday to inform him of my decision. Although he and I have had many disagreements about politics over the years, we are absolutely united in our respect and support for courage, courage and the integrity of the women and men of the U.S. forces who have served, ”Biden said.
His foreign policy priorities are now elsewhere in Asia, where he hopes to compete with China, and in Russia, with whose president he spoke on Tuesday and proposed a summit.
“We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That can’t explain why we should stay there in 2021,” Biden will say, according to his speech excerpts. “Instead of returning to the war with the Taliban, we need to focus on the challenges that will determine our position and our scope today and in the years to come.”
Yet while Biden was making his decision, the prospect of the Taliban returning to power and potentially regaining gains in security, democracy and women’s rights provided a strong counterargument to the immediate withdrawal of the US.
Deliberations extended more than some U.S. officials expected, even when Biden repeatedly noted that it was nearly impossible to meet the May 1 total withdrawal deadline. Hoping to provide him with space to make an informed final decision that he would not come to regret, officials tried to avoid pressuring a known president for failing to meet past deadlines. Top-level meetings were convened at an unusually high rate.
Biden offered his rebuttal to “many who will insist aloud that diplomacy cannot succeed without a strong U.S. military presence as a lever.”
“We gave this argument a decade. It has never been shown to be effective. Not when we had 98,000 troops in Afghanistan, nor when we reached a few thousand,” Biden said. “Our diplomacy does not depend on having harmful boots, American boots on the ground. We need to change that thinking. American troops should not be used as a bargaining chip between warring parties in other countries.”
A long history with the conflict
Officials involved in the process interpreted the extended timeline as a sign of Biden’s genuine anguish about the way forward, sources said. Meanwhile, Biden made it clear that he did not want to be rushed.
In fact, Biden has been thinking about this issue for almost as long as the war lasted, as he traveled to the region as leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as an internal advocate (initially ignored) of the withdrawal. of troops during the Obama administration.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Taliban are done and the American people will learn about it and the world will learn about it in a matter of weeks,” I predict, “he said in the interview – a projection that, 20 years later, he seems misguided as his administration works to urge peace talks between the Taliban, which controls large swathes of Afghanistan, and the Afghan government.
Still, in the interview, Biden acknowledged the long road ahead, although he could not imagine that he would be president two decades later by deciding to withdraw troops.
“The hardest part will be riding it,” he said then. “The easiest thing will be to remove it.”
Over the following decades, Biden would travel to Afghanistan as part of congressional delegations and grilled military leaders appearing before his committee.
By the time he became vice president, Biden had taken a skeptical view of a continued presence in the country. Some confidants attributed it to deteriorating conditions and the growing intractability of the political situation; others said the deployment of his son Beau to Iraq as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard gave him a new insight into the sacrifices of military families.
At one point, in 2009, he handwritten a note to President Barack Obama arguing for the withdrawal of troops and faxed it to the White House from his Thanksgiving vacation in Nantucket. He made several attempts to argue his case with Obama, who chose to increase troops before removing many.
Focusing on 2021, not 2001
His views on the war as an escape from American lives and resources have not changed since. He campaigned for a commitment to end the war in Afghanistan and reminded advisers at meetings that most Americans have forgotten about it or say in polls that it should end.
Ultimately, he believes that the time and energy devoted to the war in Afghanistan should be redirected to more current issues.
“The President deeply believes that in order to fight the threats and challenges of 2021, unlike those of 2001, we must focus our energy, our resources, our staff, the timing of our foreign policy and our leadership on national security in these threats. and the most serious challenges for the United States, “said the senior administration, which cited China, the pandemic and the most widespread terrorist threats. “Doing so requires us to close the book on a 20-year conflict in Afghanistan and move forward with clear eyes and an effective strategy to protect and defend America’s national security interests.”
Biden officials said they believed they had started late despite weighing options for Afghanistan due to the delayed transition under President Donald Trump, who refused to acknowledge the election results for weeks. Officials said at the time that they were not able to fully understand the stance of the U.S. force or assess the full scope of the deal the Trump administration had entered into with the Taliban.
Beginning in February, officials undertook a review of “genuine and realistic options” for Afghanistan, according to an official, aware of Biden’s instructions not to “cover” the possible results. Strong consultations took place between members of the Council of Ministers and foreign partners.
During deliberations with senior national security and military officials, Biden was upset by suggestions that U.S. troops should remain in Afghanistan much longer, according to people familiar with the matter, reminding his advisers that, like his two predecessors, he promised voters that the longest war in the country would end.
There was no unanimous consent among his team. Among those advocating the withdrawal, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the mixed chief of staff, had been one of the most ardent, previously suggesting in deliberations that removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan could lead to the collapse of the government. Kabul and cause a setback. in women’s rights, according to people familiar with the conversations.
The annual assessment of the U.S. intelligence community released on Tuesday was painful about the prospects for Afghanistan, which concluded that the prospects for a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government “will remain low. over the next year “.
“The Taliban are likely to make gains on the battlefield and the Afghan government will fight to keep the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support,” the assessment said.
Biden is fully aware of these risks, officials said, but made his decision based on the firm determination that there was no military solution to the various problems facing Afghanistan. Still, Saigon’s images linger, even if others reject the comparison.
“This is not Vietnam. This is different,” said Chuck Hagel, who won two Purple Hearts during the Vietnam War before serving alongside Biden as a Republican senator from Nebraska and as Obama’s third secretary of defense. .
“Responsibly managing the end of America’s longest war and the complications of American interests and helping to secure the future of Afghanistan with our allies and the Afghan people is the right course of action,” he said. dir Hagel.
This is a last minute story and will be updated.
CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.