In an interview with The New York Times ahead of the Biden administration’s exit, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would not apologize for ending the war in Afghanistan that left 13 Americans dead and the Taliban in power.
“I’m not at all sure this election is about any one or even a range of foreign policy issues. Most elections are not. But put that aside: Americans don’t want us to get into conflict. They don’t want us to get into conflict. “We’ve been through it. For 20 years, we have deployed hundreds of thousands of Americans to Iraq and Afghanistan, understandably, and when President Biden was Vice President, he presided over our war in Iraq. A long war in Afghanistan,” he said in response to a question about the election.
The New York Times said in an interview before Blinken exited the White House that Americans had long been skeptical of Biden’s foreign policy because the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan had left more than a dozen Afghans in chaos. U.S. active duty military died and led to the Taliban regaining control. The interviewer asked how “failure” in Afghanistan had damaged U.S. credibility.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken appears before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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“First of all, I will not apologize for ending America’s longest war. I think that was one of the president’s signature achievements. The fact that we will not have another generation of Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan is an important achievements.
The Times countered that the Taliban were making things more difficult for women in the country.
The interviewer said: “No matter how you look at it, the way this is carried out and the situation that Afghanistan is facing is not what the United States wants.”
“There’s never an easy way out of 20 years of war. I think the question is what do we do after we withdraw. We also have to learn lessons from Afghanistan itself,” Blinken added.
The Biden administration has faced pushback after a chaotic troop withdrawal. National security adviser Jake Sullivan even offered to resign over the decision, according to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during a daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
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Sullivan also reportedly expressed concerns about quitting, but ultimately said it would be a challenge no matter what they did.
“You can’t end a war like Afghanistan, where you’ve built dependencies and pathology and the ending is complex and challenging,” Sullivan told the Washington Post columnist. The choice is: leave, which isn’t easy, or stay forever.”
He added, “Leaving Kabul freed [United States] Respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in ways that might not have been possible had we stayed.
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Ignatius reported that the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan “broke early comity with the Biden administration’s national security team” and created a conflict between Sullivan and Blinken.
