Biden: No apologies for pullout from Afghanistan

KABUL (Pajhwok): US President Joe Biden has stoutly defended his decision on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan last year.

The US was spending $1 billion a week in Afghanistan, he said, calling the war-battered country a “graveyard of empires”.

Addressing a news conference on Tuesday, the president said unifying Afghanistan under one government was not possible.

“There is no way to get out of Afghanistan after 20 years – easily. Not possible, no matter when you did it,” he was quoted as saying by the BBC.

While defiantly refusing to make apologies for what he did in Afghanistan, Biden added: “We can’t solve every problem and so I don’t view that as a competence issue.”

Having completed his first year in office, Biden expressed his sympathy for the crisis in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover in mid-August.

The president voiced his concern about “what’s happening in Afghanistan as a result of the incompetence of the Taliban.”

PAN Monitor/mud