President Joe Biden on Thursday referred to the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a “mistake,” drawing parallels with Israel’s response to the recent Hamas attack.
During a press conference at the NATO annual summit, Biden recounted his visit to Israel following the October attack, advising Israeli leaders not to repeat the American errors post-9/11.
The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, initiated after the September 11 attacks, resulted in a 20-year conflict under the banner of counterterrorism. However, Biden expressed his long-standing opposition to the “occupation” of Afghanistan, asserting that the nation could not be unified.
“When I went to Israel immediately after the massacres that occurred at the hands of Hamas, one thing I said to Israel as a member of the War Cabinet, and with Bibi, don’t make the same mistake America made after bin Laden,” Biden said.
He suggested that the U.S. should have withdrawn from Afghanistan after the mission to target Osama bin Laden was accomplished. “I did still get criticized for it, but I was totally opposed to the occupation and trying to unite Afghanistan. Once we got bin Laden, we should have moved on, because no one’s ever going to unite that country,” Biden stated. “I’ve been over every inch of that, not every inch, the entirety from the poppy fields all the way to the north. I said, don’t make the same mistake we made.”
Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. special forces operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. After extensive peace negotiations with the Taliban, the U.S. withdrew its troops in August 2021. The rapid pullout led to the collapse of the former Afghan government and the Taliban’s return to power.
Biden has faced criticism for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, both domestically and internationally.
