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      Biden meets remains of 13 troops killed in Kabul as US promises more strikes

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      Joe BidenBiden meets remains of 13 troops killed in Kabul as US promises more strikes
      Secretary of state to bereaved father: ‘I’m deeply sorry’
      Adviser: US will help people leave after deadline
      Afghanistan – live coverage
      Richard Luscombe and Martin PengellySun 29 Aug 2021 16.03 EDTFirst published on Sun 29 Aug 2021 09.56 EDTThe White House on Sunday reasserted its promise to capture or kill the perpetrators of the deadly attacks on Kabul airport, as Joe Biden travelled to Delaware for the repatriation of the bodies of the 13 US troops who died.Pentagon names troops killed in Kabul – some were babies at time of invasionRead moreThe “dignified transfer” of the remains of the victims at Dover Air Force Base provided the most somber moment of Biden’s presidency to date, punctuating a crisis in Afghanistan that has allowed political opponents to wield the chaotic end to the 20-year war as a cudgel.Biden spoke briefly about the victims during an afternoon visit to Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) headquarters in Washington, where he received a briefing on Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana earlier.“We met with the families of 13 fallen heroes in Afghanistan, who lost their lives in the service of our country,” he said.“While we’re praying for the best in Louisiana, let’s keep them in our prayers as well.”As the president was greeting the families of the fallen, his national security adviser was reasserting that the US would continue to be involved in Afghanistan, even after Tuesday’s evacuation deadline.While Biden “does not intend to start a new war in Afghanistan”, Jake Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation, the president will continue to deploy drone strikes and to help Americans and Afghan allies leave.As many as 170 Afghans also died in the suicide bomb and gun attack on Thursday. Biden said on Saturday the drone strike which killed two Islamic State targets on Friday “was not the last and we’ll continue to hunt down those involved”.The president also warned that a new Isis terror attack was likely “in 24 to 36 hours”.On Sunday, US officials told Reuters American forces launched a strike in Kabul on Sunday, targeting a possible suicide car bomb thought to be heading for the airport.Reuters reported that the officials said the targets were suspected Islamic State militants, from the group which claimed the airport attack. The agency also said witnesses reported an explosion while TV footage showed black smoke.Sullivan said: “He also is going to talk to his commanders about whatever set of tools and capabilities they need to get the people who attacked and killed our troops at the Kabul airport and to make sure that we are degrading and debilitating the group, Isis-K, that conducted this attack.“So, yes, we will continue to take the kinds of over-the-horizon strikes like we did over the weekend against the Isis-K facilitators and plotters. And, yes, we will consider other operations to go after these guys, to get them and to take them off the battlefield.”The Taliban, which controls Afghanistan, protested the Friday strike. Sullivan said such strikes would be launched regardless of the Taliban’s wishes. He also indicated that such strikes could be implemented outside Afghanistan.Anthony Blinken, the secretary of state, estimated that about 300 US citizens remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.“We are very actively working to help them get to the airport, get on a plane and get out of Afghanistan,” Blinken told ABC’s This Week, shortly after the White House announced that the pace of evacuations had slowed. The US military flew about 2,900 people out of Kabul in the 24 hours to 3am Sunday, less than half the 6,800 evacuated the day before.Blinken was asked how the US mission could continue with its embassy closed and military assets gone. He said: “114 countries have made very clear that it is their expectation that the Taliban will permit freedom of travel going past 31 August, so that is a clear expectation across the entire international community.“We have very significant leverage to work with over the weeks and months ahead to incentivise the Taliban to make good on its commitments. The Taliban have a strong interest in having an airport that functions [and] there are other ways to leave Afghanistan, including by road.”The former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta said this week the US would be forced to send troops back into Afghanistan. Sullivan deflected an invitation to hit back.“We are capable of suppressing the terrorism threat,” he said, “including external plotting capabilities without a large permanent presence on the ground. We have done that in places like Libya and Somalia, places like Yemen. And we will do that in Afghanistan as well as we go forward.”As the military began to withdraw from Kabul, the Pentagon said on Saturday it had evacuated nearly 120,000 Americans and Afghan allies.Asked if all US citizens would be evacuated before the deadline, Sullivan said: “There is an opportunity right now for American citizens to come, to be admitted to the airport and to be evacuated safely and effectively. There are those Americans, though, and this is important, who have chosen thus far not to leave Kabul. Maybe they’ve lived there for many years. Maybe they have extended family there.“Our message to those Americans is that after 31 August, we will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident. And yes, we will ensure the safe passage of those Afghans who helped us to continue coming out after 31 August.”That would not mean relying on Taliban co-operation, Sullivan said.“This is about ensuring that we use the leverage we have available to us, and it is considerable, to hold the Taliban to its commitments. The Taliban have both communicated privately and publicly that they will allow for safe passage. We’re not just going to take their word for it. We’ve rallied dozens of countries from around the world to stand with us in saying to the Taliban that if they do not follow through on those commitments, there will be significant consequences.”Asked about Biden’s morale in a White House besieged by Republicans and a hostile press, and with a category 4 hurricane bearing down on New Orleans, Sullivan said: “I would describe the president’s approach in recent days in one word: focused.Republicans scent blood as Biden assailed over Afghanistan pulloutRead more“He is laser-focused 24 hours a day on protecting our forces there and getting this mission complete, getting these folks home safely.”Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview broadcast as Biden visited Dover air force base, Blinken offered condolences to the families of the troops killed in Kabul, including the father of Marine L/cpl Kareem Nikoui, who on Saturday blamed Biden for his son’s death.“They sent my son over there as a paper pusher then had the Taliban providing security,” Steve Nikoui said. “Biden turned his back on him. That’s it.”Blinken said: “If I were in his shoes, probably I’d feel exactly the same way. There are no words that anyone can say to assuage the grief that a parent is feeling at the loss of their child.“All I can do is take responsibility for my own actions and do everything possible to continue to bring people out of Afghanistan. That’s my responsibility. But as a parent myself I feel deeply what he expressed. All I can say is I’m deeply, deeply sorry.”TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryUS politicsAfghanistannewsReuse this content More

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      The media is lambasting Biden over Afghanistan. But he should stand firm | Bhaskar Sunkara

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      OpinionUS newsThe media is lambasting Biden over Afghanistan. He should stand firmBhaskar SunkaraThe president was right to withdraw the US from Afghanistan – and he’s being skewered for it

      I served with Nato in Afghanistan – it was a bloated mess
      Sun 29 Aug 2021 08.11 EDTLast modified on Sun 29 Aug 2021 08.12 EDTWhen Joe Biden, a conventional politician if there ever was one, said he was concluding the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan this month, in line with plans set in motion by the Trump administration, the response from the mainstream press was hostile. Following the Taliban takeover of the country, the tenor has only grown more hyperbolic.Joe Biden says new Kabul terror attack highly likely in next 24 to 36 hoursRead moreDuring the Trump years, publications like the New York Times and Washington Post presented themselves as the last defenses of freedom against creeping authoritarianism. The latter adopted a new slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness”, and spent millions on a Super Bowl ad featuring Tom Hanks extolling the importance of journalism as a profession.But for all this talk of “defending freedom”, the mainstream media has a history of reflexively defending militarism, foreign interventions and occupations. Biden – who dared fulfil a campaign promise and end America’s longest war – is learning this the hard way.As Eric Levitz recounts in New York Magazine, the media has created a public backlash against Biden, with outlets like the Times calling the withdrawal a humiliating fiasco. For the New York Times Editorial Board, the two-decade occupation of Afghanistan is described as a “nation-building project” that reflected “the enduring American faith in the values of freedom and democracy”.Key to the media narrative is the echoing of “experts” on Afghanistan like former ambassador Ryan C Crocker, who wishes in another Times op-ed that instead of bolting after a couple of decades, US troops might have remained in Afghanistan for more than a half-century, as we’ve done on the Korean peninsula. Crocker regrets that “Mr Biden’s decision to withdraw all US forces destroyed an affordable status quo that could have lasted indefinitely at a minimum cost in blood and treasure”.But as the writer Jeet Heer points out, the status quo was far from “affordable” for ordinary Afghans. The tragic figure of more than 2,000 dead US troops pales in comparison to the more than 200,000 Afghans killed since 2001. Indeed, prolonged civil war has put this year on pace to be the bloodiest for civilians as a failed US client state has overseen plummeting social indicators, widespread corruption and a total breakdown in public safety.The media had ignored the mounting chaos for years, only to laser-focus on it as a means to criticize Biden. They’ve ignored their own role in cheerleading a misguided “War on Terror” and pinned the blame for two decades of imperial hubris on the president who finally made good on promises to leave the country against the wishes of even some in his own party.What’s underlying much of the approach is a mainstream media fidelity to “expert” consensus. Many who presented themselves as fierce truth-tellers in the face of Trump hold the opinions of former intelligence and military officials in higher regard than that of a president democratically elected by 81.3 million people and pursuing a policy supported by 70% of Americans.Not only are corporate media pundits and talking heads wrong to advocate staying in Afghanistan, they’ve been wrong about generations of conflicts that ordinary people have opposed. Contrary to the popular imagination, opposition to wars from Vietnam to Iraq were spearheaded by workers, not the rich and the professional classes that serve them. It’s this general aversion to costly overseas conflict that the president should confidently embrace.Biden has never been a very good populist. For all his “Amtrak Joe” pretenses, he’s a creature of the Beltway, the ultimate establishment politician. It’s no surprise that his administration appears paralyzed in the face of criticism from its erstwhile elite allies. But unless he manages to push back against the narratives mounting against his administration, he’ll risk undermining his popular domestic agenda as well.Joe Biden did something good – and the media want to kill him for it. He should embrace their scorn and defend his actions to the American people.
      Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
      TopicsUS newsOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS press and publishingNew York TimesWashington PostcommentReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on Afghanistan: chaos turns to carnage | Editorial

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      OpinionAfghanistanThe Guardian view on Afghanistan: chaos turns to carnageEditorialThe attack on Kabul airport underlines the west’s obligations, which do not end with the occupation Fri 27 Aug 2021 13.30 EDTLast modified on Fri 27 Aug 2021 17.45 EDTFor all that it had been warned of, was perhaps even half-expected, Thursday’s terrorist attack on Kabul’s Hamid Karzai airport was a deeply shocking event. The setting for the final unravelling of the west’s failure was already frightening. Thousands of people had struggled for days to gain access to the buildings and officials that they hoped would offer them a passport to safety. With Islamic State’s attack, which began not far from the Baron Hotel where British personnel were based, and is so far known to have killed 79 civilians and 13 US service people, what had been a worst-case scenario became reality.Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State Khorasan Province and also as Isis-K, detonated a bomb that not only ripped apart lives, but also served as a bloodcurdling warning of what it may be capable of. Joe Biden, unsurprisingly, responded with a threat of his own: “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said, following the carnage, addressing the terrorists directly for the benefit of an appalled domestic audience.What happens now is that the evacuation continues amid hugely elevated distress. Mr Biden has refused to waver from next Tuesday’s deadline, with the UK effort due to conclude before the weekend. On Friday, it was clear that even bombs had failed to deter the crowds bent on escape. Queues continued to form at the sewage canal close to the airport, while administrators failed to keep pace with demand for documents to be checked. Ben Wallace, the UK’s defence secretary, acknowledged that some of those entitled to come to Britain because they had worked for the embassy or military would be left behind. Others pointed out that his figure of 1,100 was an underestimate.The longer-term impact of the attack is harder to assess, beyond the obvious point that it is alarming – or terrifying, if you are an Afghan – that an Islamic State offshoot now occupies the position that it does. Much will depend on the capacity of the Taliban to withstand this assault on their authority, and on developing relations between the various strands and strongholds of extreme Islamism both within and beyond Afghanistan’s borders. Much faster than the west expected, the Taliban filled the vacuum created by the withdrawal negotiated by Donald Trump and enacted by his successor. Now, before the Americans have even left, the Taliban themselves are being confronted.The danger is that the Afghan state and civil society, after the west’s shamefully conducted withdrawal, will collapse altogether. Already, 300,000 people have been displaced following the Taliban’s advance over the summer. Three-quarters of all public expenditure (on hospitals, schools and so on) is derived from foreign aid. There is no reason to have any confidence in the Taliban’s governance capabilities. But things are likely to be even worse for Afghanistan’s population of almost 40 million, above all the women and girls who are already having basic rights such as education removed, if their leaders become consumed by factional infighting and paranoia. Already, following the attack, there are reports of unprecedented numbers of Afghans feeling across the border to Pakistan.Western countries, including the UK, must honour their obligations, not only to those who worked for them, including the refugees who must now be found homes and jobs, but to Afghan society as a whole. The international community should find common cause in the attempt to give the people of this broken country a chance. From a western perspective, this week’s explosion may have the appearance of a parting shot. For Afghans, the fear is that it marks the start of yet another bloody chapter.TopicsAfghanistanOpinionBiden administrationIslamic StateTalibanBen WallaceSouth and Central AsiaJoe BideneditorialsReuse this content More