Secretary of State Antony Blinken Defends Ending Afghanistan War, Says Americans Don’t Want US in Conflict
In an interview with The New York Times, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the Biden administration’s decision to end the war in Afghanistan, which left 13 Americans dead and the Taliban in charge. Blinken said he wouldn’t make any apologies for ending the war, stating that Americans don’t want the US to be in conflict and don’t want to be in war.
The war in Afghanistan was the longest in US history, with hundreds of thousands of American troops deployed over the past 20 years. Blinken acknowledged that the withdrawal was chaotic, but said that the question was what to do moving forward, rather than the manner in which the withdrawal was done.
The Taliban has made it harder for women in Afghanistan, The Times noted, but Blinken responded that there was never going to be an easy way to extricate the US from 20 years of war. He also said that the US had to learn lessons from Afghanistan itself.
The Biden administration was criticized for the chaotic withdrawal, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly offering to resign over the decision. Sullivan later said that leaving Kabul freed the US to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in ways that might have been impossible if the US had stayed.
Blinken also pushed back on the idea that the withdrawal damaged America’s credibility, saying that ending the war was a signal achievement of the president’s and that the fact that another generation of Americans won’t have to fight and die in Afghanistan is an important achievement.
