Biden
Biden-Xi set virtual summit for Monday to discuss tensions
President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will hold their much-anticipated virtual summit on Monday evening as the two sides look to dial back tensions after a rough start to the U.S.-China relationship since Biden took office earlier this year.
The White House is setting low expectations for the video call between the leaders. Biden looks to stress that the two nations need to set guardrails in deepening areas of conflict in the increasingly complicated relationship between the two nations. White House officials said that no major announcements are expected to come from the meeting.
Read: Obama appeals to young activists to stay in climate fight
“I wouldn’t set the expectation ... that this is intended to have major deliverables or outcomes,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who added that the two leaders would discuss how to manage the countries’ competition and cooperate in areas where interests align.
The meeting will be the third engagement between the two leaders since February. It comes after the U.S. and China this week pledged at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland to increase their cooperation and speed up action to rein in climate-damaging emissions.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi came to an agreement on holding the Biden-Xi virtual summit by year’s end when they met last month for talks in Zurich but the two sides had not settled on a date.
The virtual meeting was proposed after Biden, who spent a substantial amount of time with Xi when the two were vice presidents, mentioned during a September phone call with the Chinese leader that he would like to be able to see Xi again, according to the White House.
Xi has not left China during the coronavirus pandemic. White House officials proposed a virtual summit as the best available substitute for the two leaders to have a substantive conversation on a number of issues that have put strains on the U.S.-China relationship.
Read: Pfizer asks FDA to OK COVID-19 booster shots for all adults
“We hope the U.S. will work together with China to jointly strive to make the leaders’ summit a success and bring China-U.S. ties back to the right track of sound and stable development,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday.
There has been no shortage of tension in the relationship in recent months as Biden has made clear he sees Beijing’s actions on a number of fronts as concerning.
The president has criticized China for human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in northwest China, squelching pro-democracy efforts in Hong Kong, and resisting global pressure to cooperate fully with investigations into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Tensions have also been exacerbated recently by the Chinese military’s flying dozens of sorties near the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory.
The White House suggested that Biden would raise his concerns on many of those issues during Monday’s meeting. “There will be a broad range of topics that will be discussed and the President is certainly not going to hold back on areas where he is concerned,” Psaki said.
Biden, at the Group of 20 meeting in Rome and again at the U.N. climate gathering, criticized Xi for failing to show up to the summits, where world leaders discussed the way forward on the pandemic and steps to ease the impact of climate change.
“I think it’s been a big mistake, quite frankly, for China ... not showing up, “ Biden said in Glasgow. ”The rest of the world is going to look to China and say, what value added have they provided?”
Both leaders took part in Friday’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) virtual meeting, where leaders discussed efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic and support the global economic recovery.
US gives 1st public look inside base housing Afghans
The Biden administration on Friday provided the first public look inside a U.S. military base where Afghans airlifted out of Afghanistan are being screened, amid questions about how the government is caring for the refugees and vetting them.
“Every Afghan who is here with us has endured a harrowing journey and they are now faced with the very real challenges of acclimating with life in the United States,” Liz Gracon, a senior State Department official, told reporters.
The three-hour tour at Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, was the first time the media has been granted broad access to one of the eight U.S. military installations housing Afghans.
But even so, reporters, including those with The Associated Press, were not allowed to talk with any evacuees or spend more than a few minutes in areas where they were gathered, with military officials citing “privacy concerns.”
Nearly 10,000 Afghan evacuees are staying at the base while they undergo medical and security checks before being resettled in the United States. The operation was described by officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Department of State as a “historic” and “unprecedented” effort to facilitate the relocation of a huge number of refugees in less than a month’s time.
On Friday, Afghan children with soccer balls and basketballs played outside large white tents. Families walked down a dirt driveway with stacks of plastic food containers piled under their chins and Coca-Cola cans under their arms. One young girl, still wearing dirty clothing, cried in the middle of the road after her food spilled and soldiers attempted to help her. Inside the containers, which refugees had spent around 15 minutes in line for in the blistering sun, were traditional Afghan meals of basmati rice and hearty stew.
READ: Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Taliban’s challenges
The U.S. government spent two weeks building what it calls a village to house the Afghans on the base. It is a sprawling area with scores of air-conditioned tents used as dormitories and dining halls on scrubby dirt lots, a landscape that in some ways resembled parts of the homeland they fled.
Under the program called “Operation Allies Welcome,” some 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted to the United States, including translators, drivers and others who helped the U.S. military during the 20-year war and who feared reprisals by the Taliban after they quickly seized power last month.
Nearly 130,000 were airlifted out of Afghanistan in one of the largest mass evacuations in U.S. history. Many of those people are still in transit, undergoing security vetting and screening in other countries, including Germany, Spain, Kuwait and Qatar.
Members of Congress have questioned whether the screening is thorough enough. Many of the Afghans who worked for the U.S. government have undergone years of vetting already before they were hired, and then again to apply for a special immigrant visa for U.S. allies.
After they are released from the base, they will be aided by resettlement agencies in charge of placing the refugees. The agencies give priority to places where the refugees either have family already in the United States or there are Afghan immigrant communities with the resources to help them start a new life in a foreign land. Those with American citizenship or green cards are able to leave once arriving at the base, according to a State Department representative.
If other evacuees — whose release is dependent on completing health protocols mandated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — choose to leave prior to the full resettlement period, that may be used against them.
So far, no one at Fort Bliss has been released for resettlement.
The Pentagon has said all evacuees are tested for COVID-19 upon arriving at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
READ: As US military leaves Kabul, many Americans, Afghans remain
The Biden administration is also using the base to house thousands of immigrant children, mostly from Central America, who have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in record numbers on their own, without adults. The children are housed there until they can be reunited with relatives already in the United States or with a sponsor, usually a family friend, or sent to a licensed facility.
Biden vows to evacuate all Americans — and Afghan helpers
President Joe Biden has pledged firmly to bring all Americans home from Afghanistan — and all Afghans who aided the war effort, too — as officials confirmed that U.S. military helicopters flew beyond the Kabul airport to scoop up 169 Americans seeking to evacuate.
Biden’s promises came Friday as thousands more Americans and others seeking to escape the Taliban struggled to get past crushing crowds, Taliban airport checkpoints and sometimes-insurmountable U.S. bureaucracy.
“We will get you home,” Biden promised Americans who were still in Afghanistan days after the Taliban retook control of Kabul, ending a two-decade war.
The president’s comments, delivered at the White House, were intended to project purpose and stability at the conclusion of a week during which images from Afghanistan more often suggested chaos, especially at the airport.
His commitment to find a way out for Afghan allies vulnerable to Taliban attacks amounted to a potentially vast expansion of Washington’s promises, given the tens of thousands of translators and other helpers, and their close family members, seeking evacuation.
READ: Defiant Biden is face of chaotic Afghan evacuation
“We’re making the same commitment” to Afghan wartime helpers as to U.S. citizens, Biden said, offering the prospect of assistance to Afghans who largely have been fighting individual battles to get the documents and passage into the airport that they need to leave. He called the Afghan allies “equally important” in the evacuations.
Meanwhile, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had disconcerting news for the lawmakers he briefed Friday, confirming that Americans are among those who have been beaten by the Taliban at airport checkpoints.
Biden is facing continuing criticism as videos and news reports depict pandemonium and occasional violence outside the airport.
“I made the decision” on the timing of the U.S. withdrawal, he said, his tone firm as he declared that it was going to lead to difficult scenes, no matter when. Former President Donald Trump had set the departure for May in negotiations with the Taliban, but Biden extended it.
Thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw most remaining U.S. troops. Flights were stopped for several hours Friday because of a backup at a transit point for the refugees, a U.S. airbase in Qatar, but they resumed in the afternoon, including to Bahrain.
READ: Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
Still, potential evacuees faced continuing problems getting into the airport. The Belgian foreign ministry confirmed that one of its planes took off empty because the people who were supposed to be aboard couldn’t get in.
A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes, guarded by a temporary U.S. military deployment that’s building to 6,000 troops. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.
Biden said 169 Americans had been brought to the airport from beyond its perimeter, but he provided no details. Later, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the 169 had gathered at the Baron Hotel near the airport and were flown across the airport perimeter to safety Thursday. He said they were transported by three U.S. military CH-47 helicopters.
Kirby said the helicopters took no hostile fire. He added that the Americans initially were going to walk the short distance from the hotel to an airport gate, but a crowd outside the gate changed the plan.
Separately, senior American military officials told The Associated Press that a U.S. helicopter picked up Afghans, mostly women and children, and ferried them to the airport Friday. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division airlifted the Afghans from Camp Sullivan, near the Kabul airport. Those officials commented only on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
Kirby said he was not aware of any such Friday helicopter mission.
For those living in cities and provinces outside Kabul, CIA case officers, special operation forces and agents from the Defense Intelligence Agency on the ground are gathering some U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for the U.S. at predetermined pick-up sites.
The officials would not detail where these airlift sites were for security reasons. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations.
In Washington, some veterans in Congress were calling on the Biden administration to extend a security perimeter beyond the Kabul airport so more Afghans could get through.
The lawmakers also said they want Biden to make clearer that the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops is not a firm one.
The deadline “is contributing to the chaos and the panic at the airport because you have Afghans who think that they have 10 days to get out of this country or that door is closing forever,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who served in Iraq and also worked in Afghanistan to help aid workers provide humanitarian relief.
With mobs of people outside the airport and Taliban fighters ringing its perimeter, the U.S. renewed its advisory to Americans and others that it could not guarantee safe passage for any of those desperately seeking seats on the planes inside. The Taliban are regularly firing into the air to try to control the crowds, sending men, women and children running.
The advisory captured some of the pandemonium, and what many Afghans and foreigners see as their life-and-death struggle to get inside. It said: “We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open.”
While Biden has previously blamed Afghans for the U.S. failure to get out more allies ahead of this month’s sudden Taliban takeover, U.S. officials told The AP that American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration ramp up evacuation efforts.
Biden said Friday he had gotten a wide variety of time estimates, though all were pessimistic about the Afghan government surviving.
He has said he was following the advice of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, in not earlier expanding U.S. efforts to fly out translators and other endangered Afghans. Ghani fled the country last weekend as the Taliban seized the capital.
Biden has also said many at-risk Afghan allies had not wanted to leave the country. But refugee groups point to yearslong backlogs of applications from thousands of those Afghans for visas that would let them take refuge in the United States.
Afghans and the Americans trying to help them also say the administration has clung to visa requirements for would-be evacuees that involve more than a dozen steps, and can take years to complete. Those often have included requirements that the Taliban sweep has made dangerous or impossible — such as requiring Afghans to go to a third country to apply for a U.S. visa, and produce paperwork showing their work with Americans.
Defiant Biden is face of chaotic Afghan evacuation
Four presidents share responsibility for the missteps in Afghanistan that accumulated over two decades. But only President Joe Biden will be the face of the war’s chaotic, violent conclusion.
The president fought that reality Monday as he spread blame for the Taliban’s swift and complete recapture of Afghanistan. He pointed to a previous agreement brokered by then-President Donald Trump, expressed frustration with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and lamented the performance of Afghan national security forces. Republicans overwhelmingly criticized Biden and he found few vocal backers among fellow Democrats.
Read: Chaos as thousands flee Afghanistan after Taliban takeover
The collapse of the Afghan government is the biggest foreign policy crisis of Biden’s young presidency, recalling setbacks for past presidents such as the withdrawal from Vietnam and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The reverberations of the Taliban’s success were startling, endangering Afghan women and girls, posing new security threats and threatening to undercut global views of America’s reliability.
In the face of such stark consequences, Biden admitted no fault for the chaotic drawdown and instead forcefully defended his move to leave a nation the U.S. has tried to safeguard since it toppled the Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when smoke still rose from the rubble of the World Trade Center.
“Here’s what I believe to my core: It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not,” said Biden. “How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war? I will not repeat the mistakes we made in the past.”
Read: Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
When Biden took responsibility, it was more for ending the war than for the manner in which it happened.
“I know my decision will be criticized. But I would rather take that criticism than pass this on to a fifth president,” said Biden. “I am the president of the United States, the buck stops with me.”
His firm tone differed little from just five weeks ago, when he bullishly predicted what would happen as his August 31 deadline for withdrawal neared. He declared there was going to be no repeat of the humiliating U.S. evacuation from Vietnam nearly a half century ago and “no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”
But Monday yielded devastating images from Kabul that rivaled anything witnessed in Saigon.
Thousands of Afghan citizens, many of whom worked as translators and other aides to American troops, thronged the Kabul airport, desperate to escape the Taliban. In heartbreaking footage, some tried to desperately board a U.S. military plane flying to safety, attempting to dash alongside as it raced down the runway.
A few managed to cling to the plane before it took off and video showed several falling through the air as the airplane rapidly gained altitude over the city.
The evacuation received condemnation at home and abroad, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the latest developments “bitter, dramatic and awful.” And security officials warned that Afghanistan would soon provide safe harbor for terrorist groups again.
The Taliban seemed poised to have total of control of Afghanistan on Sept. 11, just as they did on the date two decades earlier when al-Qaida terror attacks plotted from its soil toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. The fallout from 2001 attacks reshaped America’s relationship with the Middle East, and more than 3,000 American and NATO forces died in the resulting combat in Afghanistan during the manhunt for Osama bin Laden and beyond.
Under the command of President George W. Bush, American forces stormed into Afghanistan soon after the terror attacks on a hunt for bin Laden while trying to disrupt al-Qaida’s ability to conduct further assaults on the West. There was immediate success: The Taliban were routed, the terror group disrupted.
But after that came the grinding second phase of the war and a surge of troops from President Barack Obama in 2009. Though Obama later moved to reduce the number of troops, the volume of insurgent attacks and civilian causalities prevented a full drawdown.
Trump mulled meeting the Taliban at Camp David on an earlier Sept. 11 anniversary, only to back away from the idea amid an uproar. But he announced that the U.S. would pull all its forces out by May 2021, an agreement Biden honored and delayed only slightly.
Efforts were made, at great expense, across all the administrations to train and arm the Afghan forces once the U.S. departed. But that investment of American blood, time and treasure proved useless as the Taliban conquered much of the nation without a fight and Afghanistan’s president fled the country as soon as the invading forces reached Kabul.
Read: Who are the Taliban?
In the upper ranks of Biden’s staff, the rapid collapse in Afghanistan only confirmed the decision to leave: If the meltdown of the Afghan forces would come so quickly after nearly two decades of American presence, another six months or a year or two or more would not have changed anything.
His move to withdraw troops this summer, though polarizing in the national security community, had been praised by some on both sides of the aisle as timely and appropriate. But on Monday, Republicans were eager to slam Biden’s decision and blame him for the chaos, though many of them had supported a withdrawal when it had been proposed by Trump a year ago.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, however, had consistently advocated keeping troops in Afghanistan, and he said the military briefings he attended suggested the Taliban would be able to quickly regain power.
“I think the president felt strongly about this, obviously,” McConnell said. “He overruled his own military leaders to do it and he owns it.”
Biden has argued for more than a decade that Afghanistan was a kind of purgatory for the United States. He found it to be corrupt, addicted to America’s largesse and an unreliable partner that should be made to fend for itself. His goal was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, not building a country, and his aides have pointed to polling — taken before the chaos of the last week — that shows that a majority of Americans favor bringing troops home.
But that political gamble could prove risky as the scenes of fear and violence from Afghanistan are broadcast around the globe, especially if the chaos in Kabul makes “Saigon look like Disney World,” warned Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a veteran who served in Afghanistan.
“The bottom line is that there’s going to be a lot of people that are very let down by the United States of America,” Kinzinger said in an interview. “We will inevitably, inevitably be in conflict again somewhere. How are we going to convince those locals that we’re going to follow through when we’ve abandoned those in Afghanistan?”
Westerners rush to leave Kabul, rescue Afghans
The beating blades of US military helicopters whisking American diplomats to Kabul's airport Sunday punctuated a frantic rush by thousands of other foreigners and Afghans to flee to safety as well, as a stunningly swift Taliban takeover entered the heart of Afghanistan's capital Kabul.
Two weeks from the Biden administration's planned full military withdrawal, the US was pouring thousands of fresh troops back into the country temporarily to safeguard what was gearing up to be a large-scale airlift.
Shortly before dawn Monday Kabul time, State Department spokesman Ned Price announced the US had completed the evacuation of its embassy in Afghanistan, lowering the American flag.
At the same time, the administration announced it was taking over air traffic control at Kabul's international airport, to manage the airlifts. Sporadic gunfire there Sunday frightened Afghan families fearful of Taliban rule and desperate for flights out, one of the last avenues for escape in an evacuation made far more urgent by the Taliban's weeklong sweep across the country.
NATO allies that had pulled out their forces ahead of the Biden administration's intended August 31 withdrawal deadline were sending troops back in as well this weekend to protect evacuations of their own.
Some complained the US was failing to move fast enough to bring to safety Afghans at risk of reprisal from the Taliban for past work with the Americans and other NATO forces.
"This is murder by incompetence," said US Air Force veteran Sam Lerman, struggling Sunday from his home in Woodbridge, Virginia, to find a way out for an Afghan contractor who had guarded Americans and other NATO forces at Afghanistan's Bagram air base for a decade.
Taliban forces moved early Sunday into a capital beset by fear and declared they were awaiting a peaceful surrender.
READ: Australia sends jets to fly personnel from Kabul
That arrival of the first waves of Taliban into Kabul prompted the US to begin evacuating the embassy building in full, leaving only acting ambassador Ross Wilson and a core of other diplomats operating at the airport.
Even as CH-47 helicopters shuttled American diplomats to the airport, and facing criticism at home over the administration's handling of the withdrawal, Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the 1975 fall of Saigon.
A joint statement from the US State and Defense departments pledged late Sunday to fly thousands of Americans, local embassy staff and other "particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals" out of the country.
It gave no details, but high-profile Afghan women, journalists, and Afghans who have worked with Western governments and nonprofits are among those who most fear Taliban targeting for perceived Western ways or ties.
The statement promised to speed up visa processing for Afghans who used to work with American troops and officials in particular.
To many, the evacuations, and last-ditch rescue attempts by Americans and other foreigners trying to save Afghan allies, appeared far from orderly.
Hundreds or more Afghans crowded in a part of Kabul airport away from many of the evacuating Westerners. Some of them, including a man with a broken leg sitting on the ground, lined up for what was expected to be the last flight out by the country's Ariana Airlines.
US officials reported gunfire near the airport Sunday evening and for a time urged civilians to stop coming. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the airport was open for commercial flights – the only escape left for many ordinary Afghans – but would experience stoppages.
READ: Afghan president flees the country as Taliban move on Kabul
US C-17 transport planes were due to bring thousands of fresh American troops to the airport, then fly out again with evacuating US Embassy staffers. The Pentagon was now sending an additional 1,000 troops, bringing the total number to about 6,000, a US defence official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a deployment decision not yet announced by the Pentagon.
The Pentagon intends to have enough aircraft to fly out as many as 5,000 civilians a day, both Americans and the Afghan translators and others who worked with the US during the war.
It was by no means clear how long Kabul's deteriorating security would allow any evacuations to continue.
Rush of troops to Kabul tests Biden's withdrawal deadline
The last-minute decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help partially evacuate the U.S. Embassy is calling into question whether President Joe Biden will meet his Aug. 31 deadline for fully withdrawing combat forces. The vanguard of a Marine contingent arrived in Kabul on Friday and most of the rest of the 3,000 are due by Sunday.
Officials have stressed that the newly arriving troops’ mission is limited to assisting the airlift of embassy personnel and Afghan allies, and they expect to complete it by month’s end. But they might have to stay longer if the embassy is threatened by a Taliban takeover of Kabul by then. On Friday the Taliban seemed nearly within reach of contesting the capital.
“Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the Taliban’s speedy and efficient takedown of major provincial capitals across the country in recent days.
Biden had given the Pentagon until Aug. 31 to complete the withdrawal of the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that were in Afghanistan when he announced in April that he was ending U.S. involvement in the war. That number has dropped to just under 1,000, and all but about 650 are scheduled to be gone by the end of the month; the 650 are to remain to help protect the U.S. diplomatic presence, including with aircraft and defensive weapons at Kabul airport.
READ: Biden lands win, but virus surge threatens to derail agenda
But Thursday’s decision to dispatch 3,000 fresh troops to the airport adds a new twist to the U.S. withdrawal. There is no discussion of rejoining the war, but the number of troops needed for security will depend on decisions about keeping the embassy open and the extent of a Taliban threat to the capital in coming days.
Having the Aug. 31 deadline pass with thousands of U.S. troops in the country would be awkward for Biden given his insistence on ending the 20-year U.S. war by that date. Republicans have already criticized the withdrawal as a mistake and ill-planned, though there’s little political appetite by either party to send fresh troops to fight the Taliban.
Kirby declined to discuss any assessment of whether the Taliban are likely soon to converge on Kabul, but the urgent movement of extra U.S. troops into Afghanistan to assist the embassy drawdown is clear evidence of Washington’s worry that after the rapid fall of major cities this week with relatively little Afghan government resistance, Kabul is endangered.
Kirby reiterated the Biden administration’s assertion that Afghan security forces have tangible advantages over the insurgents, including a viable air force and superior numbers. The statement serves to highlight the fact that what the Afghan forces lack is motivation to fight in a circumstance where the Taliban seem to have decisive momentum.
Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said in an interview the announcement that 3,000 U.S. troops are heading to Kabul to help pull out American diplomats and embassy staff likely made Afghan morale even worse.
“The message that sent to Afghans is: ‘The city of Kabul is going to fall so fast that we can’t organize an orderly withdrawal from the embassy,’” Biddle said. This suggests to Afghans that the Americans see little future for the government and that “this place could be toast within hours.”
Kirby said lead “elements” of a Marine battalion arrived in Kabul on Friday as the U.S. speeds up evacuation flights for some American diplomats and thousands of Afghans. The rest of that battalion and two others are due in coming days.
“Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the Taliban’s speedy and efficient takedown of major provincial capitals across the country in recent days.
Biden had given the Pentagon until Aug. 31 to complete the withdrawal of the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that were in Afghanistan when he announced in April that he was ending U.S. involvement in the war. That number has dropped to just under 1,000, and all but about 650 are scheduled to be gone by the end of the month; the 650 are to remain to help protect the U.S. diplomatic presence, including with aircraft and defensive weapons at Kabul airport.
But Thursday’s decision to dispatch 3,000 fresh troops to the airport adds a new twist to the U.S. withdrawal. There is no discussion of rejoining the war, but the number of troops needed for security will depend on decisions about keeping the embassy open and the extent of a Taliban threat to the capital in coming days.
Having the Aug. 31 deadline pass with thousands of U.S. troops in the country would be awkward for Biden given his insistence on ending the 20-year U.S. war by that date. Republicans have already criticized the withdrawal as a mistake and ill-planned, though there’s little political appetite by either party to send fresh troops to fight the Taliban.
Kirby declined to discuss any assessment of whether the Taliban are likely soon to converge on Kabul, but the urgent movement of extra U.S. troops into Afghanistan to assist the embassy drawdown is clear evidence of Washington’s worry that after the rapid fall of major cities this week with relatively little Afghan government resistance, Kabul is endangered.
Kirby reiterated the Biden administration’s assertion that Afghan security forces have tangible advantages over the insurgents, including a viable air force and superior numbers. The statement serves to highlight the fact that what the Afghan forces lack is motivation to fight in a circumstance where the Taliban seem to have decisive momentum.
Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said in an interview the announcement that 3,000 U.S. troops are heading to Kabul to help pull out American diplomats and embassy staff likely made Afghan morale even worse.
“The message that sent to Afghans is: ‘The city of Kabul is going to fall so fast that we can’t organize an orderly withdrawal from the embassy,’” Biddle said. This suggests to Afghans that the Americans see little future for the government and that “this place could be toast within hours.”
READ: Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
Kirby said lead “elements” of a Marine battalion arrived in Kabul on Friday as the U.S. speeds up evacuation flights for some American diplomats and thousands of Afghans. The rest of that battalion and two others are due in coming days.
Biden lands win, but virus surge threatens to derail agenda
Joe Biden wagered his campaign and now his presidency on the premise that government itself could still work, even at a time of fractious political division.
When the Senate voted this week, with bipartisan support, to begin work on an infrastructure bill that Biden supported, he seemed to have proof of the concept.
But the triumph was overshadowed by the surging delta variant of the coronavirus that has forced the restoration of mask guidelines, imperiled the nation’s economic recovery and threatened Biden’s central promise that he would lead the United States out of the pandemic.
READ: Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
“Democrats have to put wins on the board going into 2022, and COVID clouds on the horizon make getting infrastructure and reconciliation done all that much more important,” said Robert Gibbs, former press secretary to President Barack Obama. He added that it’s “imperative for the Biden administration to communicate on this regularly and prepare for us for the ups and downs of this pandemic.”
The president’s first six months in office, for which he has received strong marks in most public polls, featured the full vaccination of more than 60% of Americans, the creation of more than 3 million new jobs and the passage of a sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. And in recent days, he has made progress along the massive, two-pronged infrastructure track that could pour $4.5 trillion into the United States’ economy while he also eyed future moves on voting rights and immigration.
But the virulence of the delta strain coupled with stubborn vaccine hesitancy among a significant portion of the American population have raised alarms about another punishing wave of the pandemic, a prospect that has rattled financial markets already nervously eyeing the possibility of long-term inflation.
And now Biden has entered a more challenging phase of his presidency as the virus has once more proven to be an intractable foe that now endangers the nation’s fragile return to normalcy.
“I know this is hard to hear. I know it’s frustrating. I know it’s exhausting to think we’re still in this fight,” Biden said to reporters at the White House on Thursday. “And I know we hoped this would be a simple, straightforward line, without problems or new challenges. But that isn’t real life.”
At the same time, the administration response has hardly been seamless. The administration has been criticized about its messaging on the virus, including confusing guidance this week as to when and why even vaccinated people would need to resume wearing masks indoors.
Biden himself had decreed July 4th to be the day that American declared its “independence” from the virus in front of 1,000 mask-free people at the White House. But just weeks later, staffers and journalists working at the White House were required to don face coverings again, regardless of their vaccination status.
And across the country, Americans who reveled in a return to normalcy are now being asked to wear masks again, stirring resentment in some of those who have followed health guidelines throughout the pandemic, including getting the shot. And the rollback calls into question whether the Biden administration had been too quick to relax guidelines and now risked losing some of the public’s confidence.
READ: Biden woos working class with new ‘buy American’ efforts
“They broke their word. They broke their own rules,” said Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “And now they’ve broken the trust of the American people.”
To be sure, though, the vaccine hesitancy has been most pronounced in areas strongly associated with support for former President Donald Trump, and some conservative media outlets have amplified the wariness.
Any president must be able to set aside the most organized, carefully laid plans to deal with a sudden crisis. Trump was overwhelmed by the pandemic, his best reelection argument — a strong economy — vanishing overnight while his administration’s erratic and sporadic response to the virus was judged harshly by voters.
Biden’s White House is more methodical and spent months carefully working on its infrastructure plan, which the president has prioritized for months even amid calls from some in his own party to focus on voting rights. The strategy was crafted to reach a bipartisan agreement by persuading at least 10 Republicans to lay down their partisan arms to reach a deal on so-called hard infrastructure — highways, broadband internet access, mass transit — while then proceeding on a larger, Democrats-only budget reconciliation vote for the rest of the plan.
Though the negotiations were left for dead more than once, Biden’s bet on reaching across the aisle paid off, as 17 GOP senators voted to advance the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan plan. It marked a significant win for the White House, even as numerous twists and turns surely lie ahead, including keeping all the Democrats in line for the $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan.
Biden had framed it as necessary to prove that the two parties could still work together as a demonstration that democracies could still deliver for their people.
“Our economy grew more in six months than most Wall Street forecasters expected for the entire year before we implemented our plan,” said Biden, who predicted that the infrastructure deal is “going to continue this momentum over the long term by making the most significant investment to rebuild America in nearly a century.”
Biden has pushed his broadly popular agenda directly into conservative strongholds — he has held about a half-dozen events in Republican-controlled districts in recent weeks — in an effort to paint Republicans as the party of no while hoping to rein in their turnout next fall when he tries to help preserve threadbare Democratic majorities in Congress.
With a wary eye on inflation, the president is betting that voters will reward him for his policies, as the White House argues it is Republicans who are running solely on identity politics rather than sincerely delivering for their voters.
But that strategy depends on the policy working — which is what makes the virus so dangerous.
READ: Russia and China vexing Biden
If another wave causes businesses or schools to close, not only would the public’s faith in Biden’s management of the virus surely waver, but the economic recovery would likely stagnate, jeopardizing the Democrats’ central arguments heading into next fall’s midterms.
“We’re not out of the woods,” Gibbs said.
Biden says US combat mission in Iraq to conclude by year end
President Joe Biden said Monday the U.S. combat mission in Iraq will conclude by the end of the year, an announcement that reflects the reality on the ground more than a major shift in U.S. policy.
Even before Biden took office, the main U.S. focus has been assisting Iraqi forces, not fighting on their behalf. And Biden did not say if he planned to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, now about 2,500.
Read: US airstrikes target Iran-backed militias in Syria, Iraq
The announcement comes on the heels of Biden’s decision to withdraw fully from Afghanistan nearly 20 years after the U.S. launched that war in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Together, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have heavily taxed the U.S. military and kept it from devoting more attention to a rising China, which the Biden administration calls the biggest long-term security challenge.
For years, U.S. troops have played support roles in Iraq and in neighboring Syria, which was the origin of the Islamic State group that swept across the border in 2014 and captured large swaths of Iraqi territory, prompting the U.S. to send troops back to Iraq that year.
Speaking to reporters during an Oval Office session with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Biden said his administration remained committed to a partnership with Iraq — a relationship that has been increasingly complicated by Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups. The militias want all U.S. troops out of Iraq immediately and have periodically attacked bases that house American troops.
Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Concerned Veterans for America, said U.S. troops will remain at risk.
“Regardless of whether their deployment is called a combat mission, U.S. troops will remain under regular attack as long as they remain in Iraq,” Caldwell said in a statement. “An American military presence in Iraq is not necessary for our safety and only risks the loss of more American life.”
Biden said the U.S. military will continue to assist Iraq in its fight against the Islamic State group, or ISIS. A joint U.S.-Iraq statement said the security relationship will be focused on training, advising and intelligence-sharing.
“Our shared fight against ISIS is critical for the stability of the region and our counterterrorism operation will continue, even as we shift to this new phase we’re going to be talking about,” Biden said.
The shift from a U.S. combat role to one focused on training and advising the Iraqi security forces was announced in April, when a joint U.S.-Iraqi statement said this transition allowed for the removal from Iraq of any remaining U.S. combat forces on a timetable to be determined later. It did not specify what combat functions the U.S. was engaged in then, nor did Biden get into such specifics on Monday.
“We’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” he said.
Read: Iraq: American troops leaving Syria cannot stay in Iraq
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to say how many troops would remain in Iraq by year’s end.
“The numbers will be driven by what is needed for the mission over time, so it is more about moving to a more advising and training capacity from what we have had over the last several years,” she said.
The U.S. troop presence has stood at about 2,500 since late last year when then-President Donald Trump ordered a reduction from 3,000.
The Iraqi government in 2017 declared victory over the Islamic State group, which is now a shell of its former self. Still, it has shown it can carry out high-casualty attacks. Last week, the group claimed responsibility for a roadside bombing that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens in a busy suburban Baghdad market.
In his remarks alongside Biden, al-Kadhimi thanked the United States for its support.
Back home, al-Kadhimi faces no shortage of problems. Iranian-backed militias operating inside Iraq have stepped up attacks against U.S. forces in recent months, and a series of devastating hospital fires that left dozens of people dead and soaring coronavirus infections have added fresh layers of frustration for the nation.
For al-Kadhimi, the ability to offer the Iraqi public a date for the end of the U.S. combat presence could be a feather in his cap before elections scheduled for October.
Biden administration officials say al-Kadhimi also deserves credit for improving Iraq’s standing in the Mideast. Last month, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited Baghdad for joint meetings — the first time an Egyptian president has made an official visit since the 1990s, when ties were severed after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
The Iraqi prime minister made clear before his trip to Washington that he believes it’s time for the U.S. to wind that mission down.
“There is no need for any foreign combat forces on Iraqi soil,” al-Kadhimi told The Associated Press last weekend.
The U.S. mission of training and advising Iraqi forces has its most recent origins in President Barack Obama’s decision in 2014 to send troops back to Iraq. The move was made in response to the Islamic State group’s takeover of large portions of western and northern Iraq and a collapse of Iraqi security forces that appeared to threaten Baghdad. Obama had fully withdrawn U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, eight years after the U.S. invasion.
Pentagon officials for years have tried to balance what they see as a necessary military presence to support the Iraqi government’s fight against IS with domestic political sensitivities in Iraq to a foreign troop presence.
The vulnerability of U.S. troops was demonstrated most dramatically in January 2020 when Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on al-Asad air base in western Iraq. No Americans were killed, but dozens suffered traumatic brain injury from the blasts. That attack came shortly after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian military commander Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Baghdad International Airport.
Vaccination 'most patriotic thing', COVID not yet finished: Biden
Calling a vaccination “the most patriotic thing you can do,” President Joe Biden on Sunday mixed the nation’s birthday party with a celebration of freedom from the worst of the pandemic. He tempered the strides against COVID-19 with a warning that the fight against the virus wasn’t over.
“Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence: America is coming back together,” Biden declared as he hosted more than 1,000 service members, first responders and other guests for a July Fourth celebration on the South Lawn of the White House.
Read: Biden urges shots for young adults as variant concern grows
For Biden it was a long-awaited opportunity to highlight the success of the vaccination campaign he championed. The event was the largest yet of his presidency, the clearest indication yet that the U.S. had moved into a new phase of virus response. Shifting from a national emergency to a localized crisis of individual responsibility, the nation also moved from vaccinating Americans to promoting global health.
“This year the Fourth of July is a day of special celebration, for we’re emerging from the darkness of a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain fear and heartbreaking loss,” the president said before fireworks lit up the sky over the National Mall.
Noting the lockdowns that shuttered businesses, put millions out of work and separated untold numbers of families, Biden said: “Today we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. That’s not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over. We’ve got a lot more work to do.”
Biden wanted all Americans to celebrate, too, after enduring 16 months of disruption in the pandemic and more than 605,000 deaths. The White House encouraged gatherings and fireworks displays all around the country to mark — as though ripped from a Hollywood script — the nation’s “independence” from the virus.
And there was much to cheer: Cases and deaths from COVID-19 were at or near record lows since the outbreak began, thanks to the robust U.S. vaccination program. Businesses and restaurants were open, hiring was picking up and travel was getting closer to pre-pandemic levels.
However, Biden’s optimism was measured for good reason. The vaccination goal he had set with great fanfare for July Fourth — 70% of the adult population vaccinated — fell short at 67%, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More concerning to officials was the gap between heavily vaccinated communities where the virus was dying out and lesser-vaccinated ones where a more infectious variant of the virus was already taking hold.
Read: Biden promotes milestone of 300M vaccine shots in 150 days
More than 200 Americans still die each day from COVID-19, and tens of millions have chosen not to get the lifesaving vaccines.
“If you’ve had the vaccine, you’re doing great,” said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, an infectious disease physician at the John Cochran VA Medical Center and St. Louis Board of Health. “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you should be alarmed and that’s just the bottom line, there’s no easy way to cut it.”
“But that doesn’t take away from the fact that this country is in a significantly better place,” she said.
Still, about 1,000 counties have a vaccination rate below 30%, and the federal government is warning that they could become the next hot spots as virus restrictions ease.
The administration was sending “surge” teams to Colorado and Missouri. Additional squads of infectious disease experts, public health professionals and doctors and nurses were getting ready to assist in additional locations with a combination of low vaccination rates and rising cases.
Overall, the vastly improved American landscape stood in stark contrast with much of the rest of the world, where there remained vast vaccine deserts and wide community spread that could open the door to even more dangerous variants. The Biden administration was increasingly turning the federal response to the complicated logistics of sending excess U.S. vaccines abroad in an effort to assist other nations in beating back the pandemic.
With U.S. demand for vaccines falling even as they have been widely available for months, and as governments and businesses dangled an array of incentives at Americans to get a shot, officials were increasingly emphasizing that the consequences of disease now largely reflect the individual choices of those who are not yet vaccinated.
“The suffering and loss we are now seeing is nearly entirely avoidable,” said the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
When asked about the potential risks of holding gatherings around July Fourth in areas where there are large pockets of unvaccinated individuals, White House press secretary Jen Psaki had countered that “if individuals are vaccinated in those areas, then they are protected.”
The cookout and fireworks viewing at the South Lawn was “being done in the right way,” White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said in television interviews, and “consistent” with CDC guidelines. The White House was not requiring vaccinations but was asking guests to get a COVID-19 test and to wear a mask if they are not fully vaccinated.
“For as much work there still is to do, it’s so important to celebrate the victories,” Davis said. “I’m OK with us having those pockets of joy and celebration as long as we still wake up the next day and continue to go to work and prioritize equity in vaccine distribution.”
Biden trip takeaways: Respect, optimism, some skepticism
President Joe Biden’s first overseas trip put his diplomatic and negotiating philosophy on display, as he rallied traditional U.S. democratic allies to confront new and old challenges and offered an often rosy take on the possibilities of cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a one-on-one summit.
Here are some key takeaways:
A RESET THEY DIDN’T CALL A RESET
Biden and Putin did not use the word “reset” to describe the state of relations between the two nations after their summit in Switzerland. But that’s what the meeting amounted to, with both men staking out clear areas of disagreement, even as they pointed to smaller-scale areas where they could cooperate.
They conveyed both a mutual respect and a mutual skepticism. It was an abrupt return to more conventional U.S.-Russia framing after the presidency of Donald Trump, who often seemed to elevate Putin and create at least the aspiration that the countries could be more like partners.
This time, each leader left with the understanding that some of the old rules still apply. Russia returns to its place as a “worthy adversary,” as Biden put it, rather than some kind of colleague. And the longer-standing tensions, over cyberwarfare and human rights, remain.
THE ART OF THE FACE
After their three-hour meeting, Biden’s sunny disposition stood in sharp contrast to the more sober, taciturn tone of Putin, who at times became defensive when asked questions by reporters about human rights violations in Russia and the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Even so, Biden acknowledged his optimism was more wishful thinking than reality.
“I’m going to drive you all crazy because I know you want me to always put a negative thrust on things, particularly in public,” he said shortly before boarding Air Force One, adding, that way, “you guarantee nothing happens.”
Also read: Biden abroad: Pitching America to welcoming if wary allies
It highlighted the president’s negotiating style, whether it be with Putin or with Senate Republicans at home on infrastructure — in which he publicly expresses his belief that a deal can be struck despite often overwhelming odds.
“I know we make foreign policy out to be this great, great skill that somehow is sort of like a secret code,” Biden said. “All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It’s the way human nature functions.”
He later added, “There’s a value to being realistic and to put on an optimistic front, an optimistic face.”
.... AND THE FACE-TO-FACE
Biden’s eight-day, three-country foreign trip demonstrated his emphasis on personal relationships above all.
“There’s no substitute, as those of you who have covered me for a while know, for face-to-face dialogue between leaders. None,” Biden said, declaring his summit with Putin a success simply for the fact that they spoke in person.
Throughout his trip, most of Biden’s meetings were conducted in private, without cameras, or with only a few moments open to media.
It highlighted Biden’s faith in intangible personal ties that can drive policy outcomes, both foreign and domestic.
And it marked a clear departure in style from Trump, whose freewheeling public meetings with global leaders became something of legend on the international stage. Relationships tended to flow one way — with obsequious public displays by heads of state and government trying to get on Trump’s good side.
Also read: ‘Practical work’ summit for Biden, Putin: No punches or hugs
Biden is banking that those leaders will welcome a return to the “old school” approach.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
Before leaving Washington, Biden reasserted his view that democracies are in a generational confrontation with autocratic governments and that the U.S. can’t hope to prevail if it stands alone.
With that in mind, he rallied American allies at the Group of Seven meeting of wealthy democracies and treaty partners at NATO, before his sit-down with Putin.
The sequencing was as much strategy as it was symbolism, with the unified-front posture with allies meant to bolster Biden’s position regarding Russia. It also drove momentum behind the U.S.’ ongoing showdown with China over trade, security and health policy, as Biden secured tough language on China, both in the G-7 leaders’ communique and from NATO countries in their joint statement.
MAD, BUT DON’T CALL IT A NEW COLD WAR
In the wake of a series of disruptive cyberattacks that have emanated from Russia, Biden pressed Putin to curtail criminal and state-sponsored activity from his country by warning of American digital firepower and his willingness to deploy it.
Saying he gave Putin a list of 16 “critical infrastructure” sectors, from the energy industry to water systems, Biden said the leaders agreed to task experts “to work on specific understandings about what’s off-limits” in this new domain.
Even as Biden said of Putin, “I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War,” the American president embraced a defining characteristic of that era: deterrence.
Biden said he broached with Putin and his top advisers the possibility of a cyberattack taking down one of their oil pipelines and the devastating impact it could have on their energy-dependent economy.
Also read: Face to face: Biden, Putin ready for long-anticipated summit
Biden said Putin was well aware that the U.S. has “significant cyber capability.” “He doesn’t know exactly what it is, but it’s significant, and if in fact they violate these basic norms, we will respond, he knows, in a cyber way.”
DOMESTIC TENSIONS CLOUD GLOBAL TALKS
After four years of “America First” under Trump, Biden set out to show the world that “America is back,” but lingering domestic instability cast a long shadow overseas.
Whether it be the last president’s temperament and isolationist policies or the months of efforts to undermine the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the tumult of the last four years remains a fresh and raw memory for allies and adversaries alike.
Biden’s actions and public comments showed the lengths to which he felt he needed to go to reassure allies that the U.S. could be a credible leader on the world stage.
“They have seen things happen, as we have, that shocked them and surprised them,” Biden said Monday of American allies. “But I think they, like I do, believe the American people are not going to sustain that kind of behavior.”
Even if allies were convinced, it was clear that adversaries were unwilling to forget so soon.
In his news conference following his meeting with Biden, Putin repeatedly deflected from his own deadly crackdowns on political dissenters with familiar — but now more potent — whataboutisms, by pointing to the Capitol assault and Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the U.S. last year. Biden called it a “ridiculous comparison,” though it was clear some damage couldn’t be swiftly undone.