During Biden's speech, he highlighted a number of pertinent points including airlifts, the bravery of American troops and spoke about the September 11, 2001 attacks that led to the War on Iraq.
addressed the American public regarding the ending of the Afghanistan war, which was the longest war in U.S. history.
We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible. No nation -- no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.
In April, I made the decision to end this war. As part of that decision, we set the date of August 31st for American troops to withdraw. The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban.
We were ready when they and the people of Afghanistan watched their own government collapse and their president flee amid the corruption and malfeasance, handing over the country to their enemy, the Taliban, and significantly increasing the risk to U.S. personnel and our Allies. Our Operation Allied Rescue [Allies Refuge] ended up getting more than 5,500 Americans out. We got out thousands of citizens and diplomats from those countries that went into Afghanistan with us to get bin Laden. We got out locally employed staff of the United States Embassy and their families, totaling roughly 2,500 people. We got thousands of Afghan translators and interpreters and others, who supported the United States, out as well.
It will include ongoing efforts in Afghanistan to reopen the airport, as well as overland routes, allowing for continued departure to those who want to leave and delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. And by the time I came to office, the Taliban was in its* strongest military position since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.
In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave. Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport. We're going to continue to need their help. We need your help. And I'm looking forward to meeting with you.
The bottom line is: There is no evacuation- -- evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, and threats we faced. None. To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask: What is the vital national interest? In my view, we only have one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.
The fundamental obligation of a President, in my opinion, is to defend and protect America -- not against threats of 2001, but against the threats of 2021 and tomorrow. We've shown that capacity just in the last week. We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our servicemembers and dozens of innocent Afghans.As Commander-in-Chief, I firmly believe the best path to guard our safety and our security lies in a tough, unforgiving, targeted, precise strategy that goes after terror where it is today, not where it was two decades ago. That's what's in our national interest.
As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nat- -- our nation the last two decades, we've got to learn from our mistakes. Moving on from that mindset and those kind of large-scale troop deployments will make us stronger and more effective and safer at home. My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over. I'm the fourth President who has faced the issue of whether and when to end this war. When I was running for President, I made a commitment to the American people that I would end this war. And today, I've honored that commitment. It was time to be honest with the American people again. We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan.
And most of all, after 800,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan -- I've traveled that whole country -- brave and honorable service; after 20,744 American servicemen and women injured, and the loss of 2,461 American personnel, including 13 lives lost just this week, I refused to open another decade of warfare in Afghanistan.
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