President Biden Takes Questions on the Fall of Afghanistan, Evacuation From Kabul

What’s the story?

• President Joe Biden gave an exclusive interview to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday that aired Thursday morning regarding the fall of Afghanistan and the ongoing airlift from Kabul, where over 10,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies await evacuation. He also took questions from the White House press corps after delivering remarks about Afghanistan on Friday.
• Stephanopoulos, a former communications director for President Bill Clinton, asked Biden the first questions he has taken from the media since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan. Biden declined to take questions on Monday after delivering his first public speech about Afghanistan since Kabul fell.
• Here’s a breakdown of some of the key exchanges from Biden’s interview with Stephanopoulos that were related to the crisis in Afghanistan and from the questions he took on Friday.

On the Taliban Takeover and Intelligence Estimates About the Taliban’s Capability:

George Stephanopoulos (GS): Back in July, you said a Taliban takeover was highly unlikely. Was the intelligence wrong, or did you downplay it?

Joe Biden (JB): I think ― there was no consensus. If you go back and look at the intelligence reports, they said that it’s more likely to be sometime by the end of the year. The idea that the tal ― and then it goes further on, even as late as August...

GS: But you didn’t put a timeline on it when you said it was highly unlikely. You just said flat out, “It’s highly unlikely the Taliban would takeover.”

JB: Yeah. Well, the question was whether or not it w― the idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that the ― that somehow, the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was gonna just collapse, they were gonna give up. I don’t think anybody anticipated that.

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GS: Senator McConnell said it was predictable that the Taliban was gonna take over.

JB: Well, by the end of the year, I said that’s that was ― that was a real possibility. But no one said it was gonna take over then when it was bein' asked.

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White House Press Corps (WHPC): We’ve learned, over the last 24 hours, that there was a dissent cable from the State Department saying that the Taliban would come faster through Afghanistan. Can you say why, after that cable was issued, the U.S. didn’t do more to get Americans out?

JB: We’ve got all kind of cables, all kinds of advice. If you notice, it ranged from this group saying that — they didn’t say it’d fall when it would fall — when it did fall — but saying that it would fall; to others saying it wouldn’t happen for a long time and they’d be able to sustain themselves through the end of the year. I made the decision. The buck stops with me. I took the consensus opinion. The consensus opinion was that, in fact, it would not occur, if it occurred, until later in the year. So, it was my decision.

• Biden said at a July 8th press conference that the “likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” He also said it “is not true” that the Intelligence Community (IC) assessed that the Afghan government would collapse, telling a reporter the IC “did not reach that conclusion.” Biden added that the Afghans “clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place” but that the “question is: Will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it?”
• The IC’s annual threat assessment released in April prior to Biden’s withdrawal announcement said “the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support. Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.” As of early August, defense and intelligence officials believed that the Taliban may be able to isolate Kabul, within 30 days and could take control of it within 90 days amid the terror group’s rapid gains. By August 14th, that timeline had been compressed further to as little as 72 hours before Kabul’s capitulation, prompting the deployment of additional American troops on top of the 3,000 more than last week, but as of August 15th, the Taliban seized control of all of Kabul except for the international airport.
• Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that an internal cable warning that Kabul’s government could collapse shortly after the U.S. withdrawal was sent by State Dept. personnel to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another official on July 13th. The memo reportedly cited the Taliban’s gains at the expense of Afghan security forces, and “offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation” according to the Journal’s sources, which the State Dept. said it responded to.

On the Situation at the Kabul Airport:

GS: Still a lotta pandemonium outside the airport.

JB: Oh, there is. But, look, b― but no one's being killed right now, God forgive me if I'm wrong about that, but no one's being killed right now. People are-- we got 1,000-somewhat, 1,200 out, yesterday, a couple thousand today. And it's increasing. We're gonna get those people out.

GS: But we've all seen the pictures. We've seen those hundreds of people packed into a C-17. You've seen Afghans falling―

JB: That was four days, five days ago.

GS: What did you think when you first saw those pictures?

JB: What I thought was we ha-- we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did.

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WHPC: The military has secured the airport, as you mentioned, but will you sign off on sending U.S. troops into Kabul to evacuate Americans who haven’t been able to get to the airport safely?

JB: We have no indication that they haven’t been able to get — in Kabul — through the airport. We’ve made an agreement with the — with the Taliban. Thus far, they’ve allowed them to go through. It’s in their interest for them to go through. So, we know of no circumstance where American citizens are — carrying an American passport — are trying to get through to the airport. But we will do whatever needs to be done to see to it they get to the airport. 

• The Taliban has encircled the Kabul International Airport where the evacuation is taking place and set up checkpoints around it. Although some foreign civilians and Afghan allies have been allowed to enter the checkpoints, others have been beaten and whipped by the Taliban. Shortly after Biden gave that answer to the White House press corps, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reportedly told lawmakers in Congress that the Dept. of Defense was aware of incidents in which the Taliban had beaten Americans.
• British, French, and German special forces have traveled from the airport to retrieve their citizens and Afghan allies to ensure their safe passage to the airport. For several days, the U.S. has confined its troops to the airport, but that changed when three U.S. Army Chinook helicopters rescued a group of 169 people blocks away from the airport on Thursday.
• Additionally, the Afghans who fell from the C-17 died on Monday, two days before Biden sat for the interview with Stephanopoulos, it wasn’t four or five days as the president said.

On Potential Terrorism Threats Emerging From Afghanistan:

GS: How about the threat to the United States? Most intelligence analysis has predicted that Al Qaeda would come back 18 to 24 months after a withdrawal of American troops. Is that analysis now being revised? Could it be sooner?

JB: It could be. But George, look, here's the deal. Al Qaeda, ISIS, they metastasize. There's a significantly greater threat to the United States from Syria. There's a significantly greater threat from East Africa. There's significant greater threat to other places in the world than it is from the mountains of Afghanistan. And we have maintained the ability to have an over-the-horizon capability to take them out. We're-- we don't have military in Syria to make sure that we're gonna be protected--

GS: And you're confident we're gonna have that in Afghanistan?

JB: Yeah. I'm confident we're gonna have the overriding capability, yes. Look, George, it's like asking me, you know, am I confident that people are gonna act even remotely rationally. Here's the deal. The deal is the threat from Al Qaeda and their associate organizations is greater in other parts of the world to the United States than it is from Afghanistan.

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JB (to WHPC): What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone? We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as — as well as getting Osama bin Laden. And we did. Imagine — just imagine if that attack — if bin Laden had decided, with al Qaeda, to launch an attack from Yemen. Would we ever have gone to Afghanistan? Would there ever be any reason we’d be in Afghanistan — controlled by the Taliban? What is the national interest of United States in that circumstance? We went and did the mission. You’ve known my position for a long, long time. It’s time to end this war.

• Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told Congress that it would take “possibly two years” for al Qaeda or ISIS to regenerate in Afghanistan after the departure of American forces. In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover, defense chiefs are going to reassess that estimate to see if it has advanced the timeline for al Qaeda or ISIS to reconstitute in Afghanistan.
• Shortly after Biden’s response to the White House Press Corps, Pentagon Press Secretary acknowledged at a press briefing that al Qaeda already has a presence in Afghanistan but said that it isn’t significant enough to merit a threat to the homeland.
• Additionally, contrary to Biden’s statement that there are no U.S. troops in Syria, the Pentagon has disclosed that there are about 900 American military personnel in Syria. Also, a suicide boat bombing attack against the USS Cole was launched by al Qaeda from Aden, Yemen, in October 2000; and the U.S. has engaged in numerous counterterrorism operations in Yemen against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen in the years since.

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: Biden: White House photo by Adam Schultz via Flickr / Public Domain | U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla via DVIDSHUB / U.S. Gov’t Work - Public Domain)