Afghan Couple Reunites In U.S. For The First Time In Over A Year

An Afghan couple embraced for the first time in more than a year at Dulles International Airport as more families who evacuated Kabul to escape Taliban rule arrive in the U.S.

President Joe Biden declared an end to two decades of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, offering an impassioned defense of his withdrawal and rejecting criticism that it was mishandled.

“I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit,” he said in remarks from the State Dining Room at the White House on Tuesday.

“It was time to end this war,” he added later in the speech, pounding his fist on his lectern.

Republicans have said Biden should have extended an Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw until every American was removed from the country. About 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan, according to the State Department, and the president said his decision was not “arbitrary.”

The deadline “was designed to save American lives,” he said. The U.S. would have risked additional casualties in renewed combat with the Taliban had its forces remained, he said.

Biden questioned whether Americans remaining in Afghanistan want to leave, saying the U.S. “will make arrangements to get them out if they so choose.” He said the U.S. had warned Americans 19 times since March to get out of the country as the Taliban advanced.

The president said in an Aug. 18 interview with ABC News that “if there’s American citizens left” in Afghanistan, “we’re gonna stay to get them all out.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing after Biden’s speech, “We are going to get every American citizen out. That has not changed.”

Biden described the U.S. airlift from Kabul’s airport over the last month as unprecedented. More than 120,000 people were removed, including about 6,000 Americans.

“No nation, no nation has ever done anything like it in all the history,” he said.

Biden’s political opponents have criticized the president’s withdrawal strategy, saying the U.S. should have begun removing people from the country earlier and should have operated more forcefully within Kabul -- actions the president maintains would have risked combat with Taliban forces and further American casualties.

“I believe there should be accountability for what I see as the biggest failure in American government on a military stage in my lifetime,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The president’s critics have also argued that by leaving, Biden has increased the likelihood the country would once again become a breeding ground for international terrorism as the Taliban struggle to unify disparate factions and keep the economy afloat.

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