Biden is now scheduled to give a public address on the situation at 3:45 p.m. Eastern time Monday, according to the White House. The address will be streamed online through the White House website.
It will be the president’s first in-person public comments on Afghanistan in nearly a week.
The Taliban has quickly taken over the country, seizing control of Kabul over the weekend.
The White House released a written statement from Biden on Saturday that noted he had been in “close contact with my national security team to give them direction on how to protect our interests and values as we end our military mission in Afghanistan.”
“Over our country’s 20 years at war in Afghanistan, America has sent its finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in U.S. history,” he said. “One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”
Biden had been expected to remain at the presidential retreat in Maryland, which is equipped to handle secure briefings and calls, for several more days, after arriving there Friday.
Biden announced in April that American troops would be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks this year—putting an end to the longest war ever in United States history.
But as the Taliban closed in, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday, surrendering the capital to the insurgents, who had already toppled the government in several cities surrounding Kabul.
The Biden administration has defended its decision to hold to an agreement that the Trump administration made to withdraw troops from the country, noting that the Afghan military has been trained by American forces and the United States has put billions into equipping them. But Biden has faced sharp backlash in recent days over the rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground, which required the evacuation of U.S. Embassy officials in Afghanistan, American citizens and Afghan people who have aided the United States over the past two decades.
Biden ramped up the deployment of 1,000 additional troops to Afghanistan on Saturday to aid in the evacuation of American diplomats and others who had been in the country. Another 1,000 troops were deployed Sunday, bringing the total to 6,000 temporarily stationed there, after the Pentagon previously announced that thousands would be in the region by the end of the weekend.
