President Joe Biden, a longtime supporter of a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, claimed this weekend that he’s always been against the prolonged war in the Middle Eastern country.
“Well, I’ve been against that War in Afghanistan from the very beginning,” Biden lied in an interview with CBS News’ Rita Braver. “We spent $300 million dollars a week in Afghanistan over 20 years.”
Joe Biden says the deaths of our 13 service members in Afghanistan were inevitable.
“Everybody says, ‘you could’ve gotten out without anybody being hurt.’ No ones come up with a way to indicate to me how that happens.” pic.twitter.com/ymlIisawoX
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 13, 2021
Congressional records, however, indicate that Biden, who was a Democrat senator from Delaware at the time, did vote in favor of “Authorization for Use of Military Force” on Sept. 14, 2001, just three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He was one of the 98 “yeas” who agreed to move forward with the legislation that authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”
In the interview with Braver, the president also tried to deflect blame for the disastrous withdrawal and subsequent national collapse.
“Now everybody says you could have gotten out without anybody being hurt. No one’s come up with a way to ever indicate to me how that happens,” Biden added.
This isn’t the first time the now-president has lied about his stance on Afghanistan. For months, the president has tried to shed responsibility for his chaotic and deadly military withdrawal from Afghanistan by blaming others. In August, Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that none of his military advisers had suggested keeping troops in Afghanistan.
“So no one told — your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“No,” Biden said. “No one said that to me that I can recall.”
In September, Gen. Frank McKenzie confirmed that multiple military advisers had, in fact, recommended that Biden keep at least a partial U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.
“I recommended we keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan,” McKenzie told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and, eventually, the Afghan government.”
Biden and his administration also repeatedly skirted acknowledging that there are still Americans who were abandoned in Afghanistan, which is now under Taliban control, to instead congratulate themselves for withdrawing.
Read more of Biden’s presidential lies here in The Federalist’s ever-growing lie tracker.
