Joe Biden strode into the East Room of the White House Thursday evening, set his remarks down on the podium, and looked up at the press. “Been a tough day,” he said, the words heavy. For much of the week, he and his administration had insisted that the situation was improving in Afghanistan—that what critics had likened to Saigon was turning into something more like the Berlin airlift. But as he faced the media Thursday following terrorist attacks at the Kabul airport that left more than 100 dead, including 13 American troops, he also confronted the limits of his control over the crisis playing out under his watch. “We’re outraged as well as heartbroken,” Biden said of the American and Afghan losses in Thursday’s ISIS-K attack.
Biden, who keeps a card in his pocket with casualties from the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, hit familiar notes in his remarks, invoking scripture and the death of his son, Beau, a veteran of the War on Terror, as he addressed those whose losses, he said, underscored the need to end the two-decade conflict. “The lives we lost today were given in the service of liberty, the service of security, in the service of others, in the service of America,” he said. He also promised, forcefully, to avenge them: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command.” He vowed to continue to the mission to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies, adding, “America will not be intimidated.”
But he also spoke to the limits of what he could do. The evacuation from Afghanistan now depends on the Taliban, which quickly took control of the country over the past several weeks. “No one trusts them,” Biden said. “We’re just counting on their self-interest to continue to generate their activities, and it’s in their self-interest that we leave when we said and that we get as many people out as we can.” That has helped the U.S. accelerate evacuations in recent days, he said. But while he committed to continuing that mission—“what America says matters”—he also acknowledged that his administration likely would not be able to rescue everyone who needs rescuing by his August 31 exit deadline. “I know of no conflict, as a student of history—no conflict where, when a war was ending, one side was able to guarantee that everyone that wanted to be extracted from that country would get out,” he said. “At any rate, it’s a process.”
Biden will be judged for how that process has gone—by history, and potentially by voters. But it’s not over yet. With just days to go before Tuesday’s withdrawal, U.S. officials are bracing for more strikes like the one on Thursday. “We believe it is their desire to continue those attacks,” Marine General Kenneth Frank McKenzie told reporters, warning of “extremely active” threats in the Afghan capital. “And we expect those attacks to continue.”
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