When asked how to explain to the American people the Taliban will be ruling Afghanistan on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 just like they did before it, President Joe Biden said that is "not true" because Osama Bin Laden is dead.
"It's not true: They're not going to look just like they were when we were attacked," Biden told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview Wednesday. "There was a guy named Osama bin Laden that was still alive and well. They were organized in a big way, that they had significant help from other parts of the world."
Biden noted the U.S.-NATO forces were in Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and to remove the threat of al-Qaida's terrorist camps there.
"We went there for two reasons, George, two reasons," Biden continued. "One, to get Bin Laden, and two, to wipe out as best we could, and we did, the al-Qaida in Afghanistan. We did it."
Biden lamented the U.S. stayed longer in the war-torn country.
"Then what happened? Began to morph into the notion that, instead of having a counterterrorism capability to have small forces there – or in the region to be able to take on al-Qaida if it tried to reconstitute – we decided to engage in nation building, in nation building. That never made any sense to me."
He added, "we should've" pulled out of Afghanistan a long time ago, regardless of how messy the exit would have been.
"If we had gotten out a long time ago – getting out would be messy no matter when it occurred," Biden said. "I ask you, you want me to stay, you want us to stay and send your kids back to Afghanistan? How about it? Are you, if you had a son or daughter, would you send them in Afghanistan now? Or later?"
Former President Donald Trump told Newsmax's "Greg Kelly Reports" on Wednesday night, it was not the exit that caused the chaos but the "incompetent" way it was executed.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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