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Behind closed doors, President Biden strongly believes that he made the right decisions on the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal that led in part to the deaths of 13 American soldiers, according to an upcoming book.
An excerpt from “The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump,” obtained by Axios, suggests that Biden remains defiant that the history books will look favorably on his decision to leave Afghanistan after American troops spent 20 years fighting the nation’s longest war.
Following the withdrawal, “no one offered to resign, in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy,” author Alexander Ward writes.
Biden allegedly told his top aides, including White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, that they had done their best given the situation and vowed to stand by them.
THINK THE US EXIT FROM AFGHANISTAN WAS BAD? LOOK WHAT’S BREWING IN THE PACIFIC
Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 23, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Isaiah Campbell)
“There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up,” a White House official told Ward.
The author claims that Biden knew he was making promises to get people out of Afghanistan that he could not keep as confusion and chaos unfolded at the Kabul airport.
When Biden told ABC News on Aug. 18, 2021, that he would keep troops on the ground until every U.S. citizen had an opportunity to leave, a White House official privately said to Ward, “There’s no one here who thinks we can meet that promise.”
The book, in part, recounts Biden’s alleged bias towards the analysis of the State Department, given his history chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Ward claims his partiality was also the result of Biden’s wariness of the Department of Defense and his belief that the Pentagon caused political turmoil for former President Barack Obama over a 2009 debate regarding a troop surge in Afghanistan.
President Biden delivers remarks on the terror attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the U.S. service members and Afghan victims killed and wounded in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug 26, 2021. (POOL via CNP/INSTARimages/Cover Images)
Biden’s decision to pull troops from Afghanistan faced widespread global backlash after Taliban insurgents retook the country in a matter of days on Aug. 15, 2021, 20 years after their ouster by U.S.-led forces. Just a month earlier, Biden told Americans that the likelihood of a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely.”
The military evacuation, which required thousands of additional U.S. troops on the ground and significant cooperation from the Taliban to complete, ended a day ahead of deadline on Aug. 30, 2021, leaving behind hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghan allies, despite President Biden’s promise to “get them all out.”
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On Aug. 26, 2021, during the U.S. military’s mass evacuation at the Kabul airport, suicide bombers killed 183 people, including 13 U.S. service members. The U.S. retaliated by launching two drone strikes against suspected ISIS-K terrorists, one of which ended up killing 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children.
The White House did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News’ Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.
