Biden: Last night the U.S. ended its 20 - year war in Afghanistan

The United States ended the 20-year war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history. We finished one of the biggest air lifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than twice that many experts thought possible. No nation has ever done anything like this in all history. Only the United States had the capacity and ability to do it. We did it today. The mission's extraordinary success was due to the incredible capability, bravery and self-fulfiling courage of the United States Army and our diplomats and intelligence professionals”, Biden said.

President Biden defended his administration's withdrawal and praised the country's evacuation efforts.

Since March, we headed 19 times to Afghanistan, with numerous warnings and offers to help them leave Afghanistan until March. After we started the evacuation 17 days ago, we did the initial extension and analysis and identified about 5,000 Americans who decided to stay in Afghanistan before, but now they wanted to leave,” he said.

Biden said that the operation ended up extracting more than 5,500 Americans from Afghanistan, as well as <x0-dollar Afghan translators”. However, he acknowledged that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan, but said many are double residents who decided to stay.

At the end, 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave. For those remaining Americans, there's no deadline. We remain committed to bringing them out if they want out,” said the American president.

President Biden says he disagrees with those who criticise the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan as disorderly and who say evacuations should have begun earlier.

“I take responsibility for the decision,” said Biden for the plan to end the mission. “Now some say, we should have started mass evacuations faster and couldn't this have happened, had it been done in a more orderly way? I disagree, respectfully,” he said.

Beden said that “would have had a rush to the airport” no matter when the United States began withdrawing.

“Imagine if we begin evacuations in June or July, bringing thousands of American troops and evacuated over 120,000 people in the middle of a civil war. There would still have been a rush at the airport, and it would still have been a very difficult and dangerous mission, “tha Biden.

The conclusion is that there is no evacuation from the end of a war that you can direct without the kind of complications, challenges, threats we face. None,” said Beden.