President Joe Biden on U.S. response to terrorism

President Joe Biden defended his decision to end America’s war in Afghanistan in his debut address to the United Nations on Tuesday, saying the move will allow the U.S. to pivot to other global challenges such as the Covid pandemic, climate change and an ambitious China.

Biden’s address to the 193-member body, his first since he took office in January, comes as he strives to rebuild alliances that crumbled under the reign of his predecessor and reclaim a global leadership position. He addressed a gathering of the 76th United Nations General Assembly that was scaled down because of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the majority of leaders delivering prerecorded remarks.

“As the United States turns our focus to the priorities and the regions like the Indo-Pacific that are most consequential today and tomorrow we’ll do so with our allies and partners through the cooperation of multilateral institutions like the United Nations to amplify our collective strength and speed,” Biden said from the green speaker’s rostrum.

“Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we are fixing our eyes and devoting our resources to challenges that hold the keys to our collective future,” the president said.

That collective future is strained by a continuing pandemic, uncertainties of climate change, as well as rising tensions not only with China, but within the NATO alliance itself. Last week’s decision by the U.K. and the U.S. to strike a military deal with Australia left France on the sidelines, creating a diplomatic row.

Still, Biden tried to strike a positive tone. “As we close this period of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy,” Biden said.

Biden explained that U.S. military power “must be our tool of last resort, not our first. It should not be used as an answer to every problem we see around the world.”

Under Biden’s eye, the withdrawal of approximately 3,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan at the end of the U.S.′ longest war ended in disaster as the Taliban carried out a succession of shocking battlefield gains. Despite being vastly outnumbered by the Afghan military, which has long been assisted by U.S. and NATO coalition forces, the Taliban seized the presidential palace in Kabul on Aug. 15.

Biden ordered the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops to Kabul to help evacuate U.S. Embassy staff and secure the perimeter of the airport. Meanwhile, thousands of Afghans swarmed the tarmac at the airport desperate to flee Taliban rule.

The Biden administration has since placed blame for America’s rushed exit from the country on the Trump administration and rapid collapse of the Afghan national government.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told lawmakers: “We inherited a deadline; we did not inherit a plan,” referencing Trump’s 2020 deal with the Taliban to leave the country. “There had not been a single interview in the Special Immigrant Visa program in Kabul for nine months, going back to March of 2020. The program was basically in a stall.”

“We made the right decision in ending America’s longest war. We made the right decision in not sending a third generation of Americans to fight and die in Afghanistan,” Blinken said.

In another blunder, the Pentagon admitted last week that a U.S. drone strike in Kabul amid evacuation efforts killed as many as 10 civilians including up to seven children.

The strike came on the heels of a suicide bomb attack by the terrorist group ISIS-K that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans near Hamid Karzai International Airport.

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