Biden Says He Did Not See Way to Withdraw From Afghanistan Without 'Chaos Ensuing'
21:08 GMT 18.08.2021 (Updated: 00:32 GMT 19.08.2021)
© REUTERS / EVELYN HOCKSTEINU.S. President Joe Biden discusses his 'Build Back Better' agenda and administration efforts to "lower prescription drug prices" during a speech in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 12, 2021

Subscribe
Over the last several days, US President Joe Biden has remained adamant that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a necessity, underscoring that reasoning for the pullout was further bolstered by the fact that US-trained Afghan armed forces chose to not fight back against advances made by the Taliban militant group.
US President Joe Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that there was no way to avoid the chaotic scenes that unfolded in Afghanistan over the weekend, and that, if needed, US forces would be staying past the August 31 deadline to evacuate all Americans.
Biden, who made the unexpected remarks during an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, further maintained that regardless of the mayhem, the withdrawal was necessary.
"No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way that, we're gonna go back in hindsight and look - but the idea that somehow, there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens," Biden stated when asked whether the chaotic scenes were avoidable. "I don't know how that happened."
— ABC News (@ABC) August 18, 2021
When pushed on the matter, Biden reiterated that the possibility of madness unfolding in Afghanistan always weighed on the withdrawal decisions, but that US officials understood it was going to be an "enormous" situation to oversee and handle from the get-go.
Biden's comments were in stark contrast to earlier statements in which he indicated that the withdrawal process would be orderly, as well as his past beliefs that it would be "highly unlikely" the Taliban would not be "overrunning everything and owning the whole country."
However, the conversation also geared back toward the Trump administration, which had negotiated the US withdrawal with the Taliban with an original deadline of May 1. Leaning into the threat of violence for US troops, Biden surprisingly admitted that one of the main reasons that attacks against American forces had been pulled back was because of the Trump White House's peace deal.
"I hear people say, well you had 2,500 folks in there and nothing was happening. You know, there wasn't any more - but guess what, the fact was, that the reason that wasn't happening, was the last president negotiated a year earlier that he'd be out by May 1st and that the return, there'd be no attack on American forces. That's what was done. That's why nothing was happening," Biden said.
"I had a simple choice. If I said, 'we're gonna stay,' then we'd better be prepared to put a whole lot hell of a lot more troops in."
Although Biden White House officials had previously dodged questions on whether US forces would stay past the August 31 deadline to evacuate all Americans from Afghanistan, the commander-in-chief stressed during the exclusive interview that troops would indeed stay longer if needed. "We're going to stay until we get them all out," he said.
— ABC News (@ABC) August 18, 2021