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“My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over,” US President Joe Biden said in an address 24 hours after the last American C-17 cargo plane left the war-torn country of Afghanistan.
Biden declared, “I promised the American people I would end this war. Today, I've honored that commitment.”
Further defending his decision to withdraw US troops, Biden said, “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”
The evacuation in the past few weeks has also been marred with violence, including a suicide bombing last week that killed 13 American service members and 169 Afghans, AP reported.
He added, “As we closed 20 years of war and strife and pain and sacrifice, it’s time to look to the future, not the past. To a future that’s safer, to a future that’s more secure, to a future that honours those who served and all those who gave, what President Lincoln called, ‘their last full measure of devotion’.”
He asserted, “I refused to continue the war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people.”
Biden also applauded the evacuation efforts of the US military and said, “We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history – with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. No nation has ever done anything like it.”
(With inputs from AP)
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