Fact-Checking Biden’s Latest Statements on the Afghanistan Withdrawal

The president claimed al-Qaeda is ‘gone’ from the country and that no Americans have been unable to get to Hamid Karzai Airport.

By and
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On Friday, President Joe Biden delivered a speech on the effort to evacuate Americans and our Afghan allies from Afghanistan. During his speech, Biden made false claims about the presence of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the safety of Americans attempting to evacuate the country through its capital city of Kabul.

At one point, in response to a question about Biden’s message “to America’s partners around the world who have criticized not the withdrawal, but the conduct of that withdrawal and made them question America’s credibility on the world stage,” Biden responded, in part, by saying that al-Qaeda is “gone.”

More specifically he said: “Look, let’s put this thing in perspective here. 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.”

Biden’s statement is false. Al-Qaeda is not “gone.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Hrodland

    The best after-disaster report I've read so far--from Rory Stewart, who probably knows more about Afghanistan than anyone.

    One of his gems: "There was no way we were ever going to eliminate corruption."

    It was just part of the culture.

    https://rusi.org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-60-rory-stewart-failure-and-villains-western-campaign-afghanistan

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    David Chen

    Oh and it needs to be said: President Draft Dodger accuses Afghan army of not having the will to fight after 50,000 deaths.

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    David Chen

    For those who think that this doesn't hurt our credibility with allies...

    Even as an American, I would discourage anyone from joining the US military at this point. When you look at the clowns who ran the last 4 administrations and who your commander-in-chief will be, why in the world would you entrust your life to them?

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      El Duderino

      Because America is bigger than one person, and it's still worth fighting for, even as flawed and imperfect as it is. That's why.

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        David Chen

        But the problem extends far beyond one person. The American people have a duty to the troops to not elect such incompetent presidents, and to not stand idly by as congress happily cedes war-starting/ending/making powers to that person in the process. We've failed spectacularly at both in the past two decades. I dont blame anyone coming back from Afghanistan for feeling disillusioned. We - the People - sent them to there in overwhelming agreement, then lost interest, then telegraphed that we want to get out for a decade, then finally surrendered and retreated in the most incompetent and shameful way. The troops fought for America and America's honor, and now they will be called liars who went back on their word to all the Afghans who helped. Not because they lied, but because the citizenry/politician made the call for them. Under that system, I cant in good conscience tell someone to entrust that system with their life, their legacy, or their honor. If Russians invaded like in Red Dawn, then by all means fight for the homeland. But as part of a modern military apparatus that answers to the whims of the president and the modern American people?

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          El Duderino

          Brother, I don't know if you've ever served. If you have, thank you for your service, and you, like me, have a unique view of what that service and sacrifice means. But again, we, and hopefully continuing generations, stand guard at the gates of the unknown to protect against the possibility of unchecked violence. The last 20 years has been marked by failure after failure in Afghanistan. One could make an argument that we've dropped the ball concerning the world at large. But for all that, those who sacrifice their lives for this country and, if necessary, their actual lives, believe that America is bigger than one man or system. Back in '04, I believed that I was fighting for something bigger than myself. My 18 year old mind, while immature, knew that this country wasn't perfect. But I still put my feet on the footprints in San Diego and swore my oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, not the President, and not the broken system I was indirectly beholden to. That's what I mean. Were we misused? Yes, grievously. But we still stood the line, because we believed that things would get better. If we didn't fight to protect that hope and that chance, then we all may as well go home and give up, because there's nothing left to defend. In short, what I mean is, we always will willingly answer to the American people, as imperfect as they are. Because we believe that the people of America deserve to be protected until they can figure out how to be responsible with their power. It may not come tomorrow or even next year, but we believe that the hope is worth the sacrifice.

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          Hrodland

          I'll agree that now is not a good time for the military or the US in general.

          But we can come back from this. It will just take time.

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      2. Christopher Shafik

        Exactly. I want to serve because I believe in IDEA that is America and aspire to her highest ideals.

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I just want whatever the docs are prescribing him. He's seems like he's really enjoying all this.

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    Anne W (Raw5254)

    I want to recommend a really good podcast about our involvement in Afghanistan. It isn’t too long, and it’s easy to follow. It’s discouraging and frightening, but it’s also hopeful. And the hopeful part is what we need from leadership, and haven’t been getting. But also, it’s the knowledge so many of us have been lacking. Post Corona Podcast was recommended by John Podhoretz (Commentary Magazine), and it’s the latest one: Afghanistan and the New Geopolitics with Fred Kagan.

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    Stephanie

    Lots of overheated comments here. So al Qaeda is there. But in insignificant numbers. So not 100% of Americans are getting through with ease to the airport. Apparently some are being harassed or even beaten. This fact check would have been more valuable with something more exact in the way of quantification.

    This is worth fact checking but hardly merits outrage. You could call it lying or you could call it minimizing.

    It's important to keep your eye on the ball. The war itself was a mistake, prolonging it was an outrage, ending it was the right thing to do, and getting everyone out safely is still in progress.

    Many of the people trying to paint this as "humiliation" and "failure" are--beware--the very people in the Bush administration who got us into this mess and are trying to convince the general public that we should have stayed. Or sent in more troops.

    Instead of admitting their errors, they're doubling down.

    If there's no honest accounting of how we ended up in this extremely expensive 20 year quagmire, it's highly likely we'll end up in another one as soon as we have another Republican president.

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    1. Richard Fulmer

      Why was going into Afghanistan a mistake? What should we have done in response to the al Qaeda-planned 9/11 attack?

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        Stephanie

        As I recall, the plan was to find Osama bin Laden, who was supposed to be hiding in the Tora Bora caves, as he was the leader/hero of al-qaeda.

        Even at the time, however, people who understood that movement pointed out that removing Bin Laden would change nothing since the movement would go on under different leadership. As it in fact did.

        More broadly I also recall the objective was to wipe out the training camps there, although it was pointed out again, that training camps would pop up elsewhere, like whack a mole.

        However, like a person whose only tool is a hammer and who treats everything like a nail, there was no stopping this deployment.

        I have no answer to the problem of jihad terrorists, and I'm not sure anyone else did, but there was this anger and desire to punish the malefactors, in this country, that was unstoppable. Everyone had those little tiny American flags on their cars and the atmosphere was ripe for jingoism.

        There could at least have been some serious attempt to understand and deal with the grievances that made jihad so attractive to people in the Middle East. I had a Palestinian colleague at work, a nurse. He was no radical, but I was startled to find that Osama bin Laden was a hero to him.

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        1. Richard Fulmer

          My understanding is that bin Laden’s immediate reason for attacking the U.S. is that we had stationed troops in Saudi Arabia in 1990 at the beginning of Desert Shield. Most were pulled out in 2003, two years after 9/11, but a few hundred remain.

          Both the Taliban and al Qaeda have stated, however, that their larger goal is to bring the world under Sharia law.

          Muslims are very aware that the Ummah, or Islamic community, has fallen from domination of the Mediterranean to an economic, cultural, and military backwater.

          Kemal Ataturk worked to pull Turkey into the modern world by importing western ways and technology. Other leaders in the Islamic world followed suit.

          The results were mixed to say the least. While there was material progress, there was also a string of ugly dictatorships - dictatorships that weren’t capable of even defeating a fledgling and outnumbered Israel.

          Islamic fundamentalists claim that the problem is that the Ummah has fallen away from true Islam, and that a return to Mohammed’s teachings - including jihad - is necessary.

          Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have bankrolled radical Islamist groups as a way to bribe them to take their jihad elsewhere. They did.

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            Stephanie

            Thanks, that fills in some gaps for me.

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        Hrodland

        Presumably, infrastructure...

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        1. Richard Fulmer

          Or end global warming.

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    2. Vic

      Here again pointing to prior administrations is irrelevant. In hindsight, poor decisions were made in all administrations from Bush through Trump. However, nobody “made” Biden execute the withdrawal in such a hasty, incompetent, and chaotic manner. He knew he was going to withdraw so what was stopping him from commencing the process on January 21 in a deliberate and orderly manner? Answer: Biden has never run anything in his life, is incompetent and lacking the capacity to be president. Biden presented himself as the candidate of competence. Oops!

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        Stephanie

        Biden has "never run anything?" I think this is incorrect as is your whole sweeping conclusion.

        When you lose a war, and have to pull out, it's messy and chaotic. Why did everyone think this was going to be dignified and well paced? Remember Saigon? We're lucky our people were not under shelling, as they were then.

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          David Chen

          We didn't have to lose a war or have to pull out. We surrendered because the politicians run the show, the American public is tuned out, and the MSM is worse than useless.

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            Stephanie

            I've read an awful lot of articles written by or interviewing military on the ground. Have you? They don't agree with you. Some of them have a lot of justified anger about the situation they were placed in.

            Remember that song from the 60"s? "So it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn, the next stop is Viet Nam." It's déja vu all over again.

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        2. Vic

          No, he hasn't. He's been a career-long legislator not responsible for running anything, but constantly talking. Same as vice president. Further, Biden, Blinken, et. al., specifically assured us the Afghanistan withdrawal would NOT be another Saigon. Seems they spoke too soon.

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            Stephanie

            https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/08/20/journalists-getting-suckered-by-ass-covering-sources-on-afghanistan/

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      2. ExploreOK

        You mean it's wrong to give long-winded descriptions of past policy failures to hand-wave away a Biden administration failure so bad that people are falling from the sky?

        And you mean it's not outrageous that the administration had no plan in place to assist tens of thousands of Afghan allies, not to mention American citizens, who were told that there was no expectation the Afghan government would collapse in the matter of days?

        And it's not outrageous that they had no plan for the above, despite multiple warnings from top military leaders and other intelligence agencies that the Afghan government was actually at risk of collapsing within days?

        Listen, morality is only paramount when it can be used as a cudgel to bash the other side. We need to make as many excuses as possible otherwise.

        Having no plan in place for this situation, which they knew full well was coming, is a failure of leadership and moral obligation. The end.

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        1. Vic

          Yep, something like that.

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          Hrodland

          The embassy was warning of precisely this outcome in July.

          Maybe somebody in Washington should have thought how to avoid it?

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          1. DJ

            They warned this might happen *after* the pullout deadline of August 31. Today is August 22.

            The day before the fall of Kabul, Ghani told Blinken they were prepared to right to the death. Less than 24 hours later Ghani was on a plane out of the country.

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      Hrodland

      At what point was it a mistake--on 12 Sept, 2001?

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      1. DJ

        December 7, 2001, when Rumsfeld rejected a deal that would've put Mullah Omar under house arrest.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/news/rumsfeld-rejects-planto-allow-mullah-omar-to-live-in-dignity-taliban.html

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        Stephanie

        There have been lengthy analyses of how this turned into a losing cause years ago. Many comprehensive articles in both the NY Times and WaPo. Basically, they failed to find Osama Bin Laden, but that was taken care of in 2011. They reduced al-Qaeda to being toothless. Then mission creep set in.

        Here's a quote from a Politico article I just read by Philip Caputo (who was in Vietnam and wrote an excellent book on his experiences, A Rumor of War). You can probably figure out when the mistakes began:

        The blunders, committed by three successive U.S. administrations, sprang from a number of misconceptions. The U.S. assumed Afghanistan is a country with a coherent national identity rather than what it is — a loose federation of ethnic enclaves (Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras) run by warlords with no abiding allegiance to a central government. And the U.S. assumed the Afghan government, despite rampant corruption and double-dealing, would eventually establish a functioning democracy, or at least a simulacrum of one.

        To most Americans, Afghanistan is mysterious, utterly foreign, unknown and unknowable. Vietnam was like that. When I served there as a rifle platoon commander, we often called the United States “The World,” as if we were fighting on some alien planet. In a way, we were. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama’s defense secretary and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, stated that the disconnect between Americans and Afghans was a repeat of the one that undermined the effort in Vietnam.

        “This is the lesson we learned in Vietnam, and we have to learn it in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, too,” Hagel said. “We get into these situations, we’re never sure why we’re there. We never get to learn the country, the customs, the people.”

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          Hrodland

          I'll just say that Vietnam cost us dear--and this will too.

          Afghanistan was a fairly peaceful state before 1978. But we're in Afghanistan because the Khalq and Parcham factions in Afgnanistan thought Russia was the way to go after Vietnam. When they couldn't hold the country, the Soviets moved in--with the results we know all too well.

          Besides a number of Communist-backed insurgencies, the Shah fell and we got an Iranian regime that persists to this day.

          Because we lost in Vietnam.

          Now we've handed the biggest victory to Islamic radicals in 20 years.

          Sadly, real-world events have real-world consequences--and the Fall of Afghanistan will be one of them.

          No such thing as a consequence-free failure.

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            Stephanie

            Only if you think Afganistan can or should be controlled by a world power as if it were a colony; only if you think for some reason the Shah was good for Iran (even though despised by the Iranians who knew he'd been put in place by the US) rather than Mossadegh; only if you think Vietnam was to be a perpetual colony and was not entitled to self determination (Ho Chi Minh won a free and fair election).

            This is the thinking that gets the US into humiliating defeats--the Afghans, Vietnamese, Iragis and Iranians are not US colonies and none of them want to be occupied by our military.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Get’em Alec and Khaya.

    We cannot, at this point, let anything slip by on the facts for this.

    This singular pullout of America, will live in infamy as one of the worst strategic withdrawals of American foreign policy in history.

    We might as well know the truth, as much as possible, from start to finish, wether for the withdrawal or against, we need to know all the details possible and what the administration is intentionally lying about.

    There is no hiding the ball anymore here. Just the plain, cold, hard truths that rend at the soul.

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  8. Raincheck

    I voted for Biden.

    I knew he had never run anything. I knew he had only a casual relationship with the truth.I knew that his talk far exceeded his action. I knew he contradicted himself. A lot. Often in the same sentence. I knew he not a genius, and that he had lost a step or two to age. I knew he responds to being questioned with anger. And I knew he wasn’t Donald Trump.

    This is all of Biden’s weaknesses come home to roost. Policy based on wishful thing. Believing his own talking points. Failure to plan for an orderly retreat if the worst case happened. Over promising. Way under delivering. Then lying, not admitting to the facts on the ground, contradicting his own statements at the start of the process. Chaos. Poor management.

    Our system is broken, and I still think this incompetent, aged-out boob was the better choice. America needs to be revitalized and pulled in from the polar pulls on the left and right that pretty much agreed on this disastrous plan going in. We could have left without disaster, even if it meant staying a little longer to achieve.

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    1. Jeff

      I don’t have one problem with your transparent admission here on how you voted but will note the irony of your having to support a person you knew had serious issues - much like many Trump voters.

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      Faraday

      So what can we do to start making better choices in our political leaders. It’s not just the Presidency, look at the clown show in Congress. We use so many bad criteria in making these decisions.

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      1. Richard Fulmer

        As Jonah often points out, our system for electing our leaders is broken. Since McCain-Feingold, the parties have little control over the candidates who claim to represent them.

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      Victor Clairmont

      Thanks for your honesty.

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  9. Mr Risk

    It is totally disgusting, embarrassing, all for a 9/11/21 photo op. What has government come to when there is total incompetency at the top. It is worse that Saigon helipcopters and what was wrong with keeping 3000 soldiers there for the next 40 years? I will never understand that...

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      Victor Clairmont

      It is worse. It took 2 years for Saigon to fall before those terrible images came to pass.

      This happened within months.

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    Hrodland

    This is going to last far beyond 31 Aug.

    There are eligible evacs out in the countryside that still need to get to Kabul, as well as hundreds if not thousands too wary to trust the Taliban on the streets. We will be hearing about them, and their stories, for weeks if not months.

    This is looking more like the Tehran Embassy crisis every day.


    So...infrastructure week anyone?

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    1. DJ

      Here's what I don't get. The state dept put out a bulletin on May 15 telling all Americans to get out of the country ASAP. Was this not publicized in-country? Did most people just ignore it?

      https://af.usembassy.gov/security-alert-may-15-2021/

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        Hrodland

        But Biden was also claiming that the Afghans would hold on for many more months. Indeed, if they were brave they wouldn't lose, regardless of American support.

        So should they have realized he was lying, and got out ASAP?

        You might also recall that many Americans there have an emotional attachment to Afghanistan, and were there to help.

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        1. DJ

          Sure, but I don't think he was lying. He was just wrong. The people there didn't know either, obviously, so I would assume they trusted their local sources of information.

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      2. ExploreOK

        What is ASAP in the context of claims that Afghanistan's current government is expected to stand for at least the coming year to year and a half? In the context of claims that the Afghan army was 300,000 strong?

        Let's assume the Americans there should have known better and saw the bulletin.

        Would you argue there is no obligation to help them get out? We should allow them to be tortured or put in a firing line by the Taliban?

        What message would that send to the Americans doing outreach in other dangerous locations?

        I'm not saying there are no limits to American commitment to help Americans who knowingly disregard security warnings from the government, but with the tens of thousands in danger, I just don't see how a 'no commitment' or 'minimal commitment' to rescue is justified.

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        1. DJ

          I'm not arguing there is no obligation to no get them out. I'm just not sure what people were expecting three months ago. There's been a drumbeat of stories about Taliban taking control of more territory over the last month or so. Did they not see the news too?

          Under "actions to take" it says:

          Make plans to depart Afghanistan by commercial airlines
          Have evacuation plans that *do not rely on U.S. government assistance*

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            Hrodland

            How many empty seats were there on outgoing planes.

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      Victor Clairmont

      If it goes beyond the 31st….

      The question is does the Taliban care to extend a deadline that they are already semi-breaking.

      Furthermore, when the last plane is leaving, and the troops are getting out…

      That huge mob of tens of thousands outside the gate, Afghanistan’s trying to get out, are they just going to sit still while the last plane to salvation takes off?

      That, is not a good day coming.

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