Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would make no apologies for the end of the war in Afghanistan, which left 13 Americans dead and the Taliban in control, during an interview with The New York Times before departure of the Biden administration.
“I’m not at all sure that the election revolved around one or even a set of foreign policy issues. Most elections don’t. But that aside: Americans don’t want us to be in conflict. They don’t want us to be in conflict. We’ve been through 20 years of hundreds of thousands of Americans being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. had had enough, understandably, when the president Biden was vice president, he presided over the end of our involvement in Iraq, as president, he ended the longest war in our history, Afghanistan,” he said in response. to a question about the elections.
The New York Times spoke with Blinken before his exit from the White House and said Americans were highly skeptical of Biden’s foreign policy because of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left more than a dozen of people. American military died and led the Taliban to regain control. The interviewer asked how the “failure” in Afghanistan damaged America’s credibility.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken appears before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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“First, I make no apologies for ending America’s longest war. This, I think, is a landmark achievement on the part of the president. The fact that we will not have another generation of Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan, that is a significant accomplishment in and of itself,” Blinken responded.
The Times reacted, pointing out that the Taliban had made life much more difficult for women in the country.
The interviewer said: “In any way possible, the manner in which this was done and the state in which Afghanistan was left could not be what the United States wanted. »
“There will never be an easy way out of 20 years of war. I think the question was what were we going to do after the withdrawal. We also had to learn lessons from Afghanistan itself “added Blinken.
The Biden administration was hit by reluctance after this chaotic withdrawal. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan even offered to resign following this decision, according to David Ignatius of the Washington Post.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
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Sullivan also reportedly had concerns about the release, but ultimately said it would have been a challenge no matter what they did.
“You can’t end a war like Afghanistan, where you’ve created dependencies and pathologies, without the end being complex and difficult,” Sullivan told the Post columnist. “The choice was: leave, and it wouldn’t be easy, or stay forever.”
He added that “leaving Kabul freed the (United States) to confront Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a way that might have been impossible had we stayed.”
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Ignatius reported that the withdrawal from Afghanistan “broke the initial civility” of the Biden administration’s national security team and created a dispute between Sullivan and Blinken.
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