Whatever one thinks of the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, its explanations of the situation often haven’t been authoritative or confidence-inspiring. President Biden has gotten facts wrong. His answers have meandered. Aides have offered different figures or acknowledged they don’t have good data. Biden keeps reverting to defending the overall decision to withdraw, when the real questions are about the execution of it.
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And on Friday, in his first broad-ranging news conference since the fall of Kabul, Biden offered one of his most puzzling moments.
Biden was asked by ABC News whether he would send American troops into Kabul to assist Americans who couldn’t get to the airport, which has been secured. Biden disputed the premise of the question.
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“We have no indication that they haven’t been able to get, in Kabul, through the airport,” Biden said. He cited an agreement with the Taliban in which people with American passports would be allowed through checkpoints.
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The president added: “So we know of no circumstance where American citizens, carrying an American passport, are trying to get through to the airport [and can’t]. But we will do whatever needs to be done to see to it they get there.”
This doesn’t comport with the reporting on the ground, from many, including The Washington Post’s Susannah George in a piece Friday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would later reportedly acknowledge in a briefing that Americans had been beaten.
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ABC’s Ian Pannell, who is on the ground in Kabul, remarked on Biden’s comment: “The reality and the rhetoric are miles apart. I’m not quite sure what advice the president’s receiving.”
CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who has become perhaps the most-cited reporter on this topic, said, “Anyone who says that any American can get in here is — you know,” Ward said, pausing and sounding flabbergasted. “Technically, it’s possible, but it’s extremely difficult, and it is dangerous.”
An NPR reporter later in the news conference pressed Biden on the claim, pointing to that reporting: “Are you saying unequivocally that any American who wants to get to the airport is getting there and getting past the security barrier, to the planes where they want to go?”
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Biden sought to narrow his claim — suggesting he was only referring to those who had actually reached the airport and were trying to get in.
“I thought the question was how can they get through to the airport — outside the airport,” he said. “And the answer is, to the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints — they are letting through people showing American passports.”
It’s theoretically possible that this was simply a misunderstanding. But the question was very clear.
“The military has secured the airport, as you mentioned,” the ABC reporter asked. “But will you sign off on sending U.S. troops into Kabul to evacuate Americans who haven’t been able to get to the airport safely.”
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What’s more, this is perhaps the most pressing issue right now — the kind of thing that a president would undoubtedly have been talking to advisers about. And even when the premise of the question was clarified, Biden talked not about the situation farther from the airport in Kabul, but about an effort to bring 169 Americans who were just outside the airport over a wall. He also mentioned the difficulty in sorting through who is showing up at the airport.
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At another point, Biden was asked about the military extending the perimeter around the airport, and he replied, “We’re considering every opportunity and every means by which we could get folks to the airport.” But he suggested expanding the perimeter wasn’t ideal because of “unintended consequences.”
What to do farther from the airport is a thorny issue and perhaps isn’t something Biden wants to discuss publicly, given it might involve an expansion (however brief) of the military campaign into territory controlled by the Taliban. But even if we’re not quite talking in those terms, it’s an issue on which we could use some clarity about what’s being done, what’s on the table — or at least just what’s actually happening. That clarity has been slow coming for much of the week.