U.S. President Joe Biden announced in an interview with ABC on Wednesday that American forces could remain in Afghanistan beyond the scheduled withdrawal deadline of August 31 if necessary to evacuate "all Americans" from the country. In response to the host George Stephanopoulos's question about whether U.S. troops could stay in Afghanistan until the last American wishing to leave the country has been evacuated, Biden replied, "Yes." He added, "Americans need to understand that we will try to accomplish this before August 31," before stating, "If American citizens remain, we will stay to get them all out."
Regarding the evacuation of Afghans, Biden said that the Taliban are facilitating the evacuation of Americans and foreigners from Kabul, but U.S. forces are facing "difficulties" in getting Afghan citizens who assisted them and wish to flee their country after it fell into the hands of the militant group. He noted that the Taliban "are cooperating; they are allowing American citizens to exit, and American employees to exit, and embassy staff to exit, and so on, but they are facing—we are facing greater difficulty in getting out those who helped us when we were there."
Biden acknowledged that he was shocked by the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and its army after all that the United States had provided to them, while considering that "chaos" in Afghanistan was inevitable following the U.S. withdrawal. The Democratic president stated that the idea "that it was possible to leave without it resulting in chaos, I just don’t see how that could happen."
