*US President Joe Biden in a speech on Friday honored the sacrifice ofcombat veterans ahead of the planned withdrawal later this year fromAfghanistan and said they have achieved their purpose in the country –which was “to prevent al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base from whichto attack America in the future.*
Addressing US service members in a hangar at Joint Base Langley-Eustis inVirginia, Biden said the US went to Afghanistan with a clear purpose: “toget the people who attacked us on 9/11 and to prevent al Qaeda from usingAfghanistan as a base from which to attack America in the future. Toachieve that purpose – you achieved that purpose.”
“Year after year, deployment after deployment, American troops pursued theterrorist threat through some of the most unforgiving terrain on theplanet,” Biden said.
“As we draw down, we’re also going to focus on the urgent work ofrebuilding over-the-horizon capabilities that’ll allow us to take out alQaeda if they return to Afghanistan but to focus on the threat that hasmetastasized,” Biden said.
He said that the greatest threat and likelihood of attack from al Qaeda orDaesh is not going to be from Afghanistan; “it’s going to be from fiveother regions of the world that have significantly more presence of both alQaeda and organizational structures, including ISIS.”
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This comes as US Defense Department last week confirmed that Americantroops and their NATO allies intend to be out of Afghanistan by early tomid-July, months ahead of the deadline announced by President Biden.
On Friday, a key military base of US forces in downtown, the New KabulCompound, also known as NKC, was handed over to the Ministry Defense.
