Joe Biden is OK leaving thousands to die, but that doesn’t mean we should be - Alexander Brown

US president Joe Biden has defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and turned his back on any pretence of being a world leader in the process.

A defiant Mr Biden insisted on Monday night he stood by the move that has seen the Taliban take control of the country in a little over a week.

Holding a press conference after a backlash – not because he wanted to – Mr Biden gave a speech so mean spirited and disingenuous an orange filter could have you mistaken it for his predecessor.

He claimed the mission was "never supposed to have been nation building", despite calling for exactly that in 2003.

US President Joe Biden has refused to take responsibility for the crisis.

Mr Biden accused Afghanistan' s leaders of giving up, as if fleeing from murderers armed with machine guns is cowardice.

He then claimed a poorly paid military that has seen almost 70,000 casualties in the past 20 years had not even tried to fight.

It was a press conference that demanded an apology and contrition, but instead saw Mr Biden seek to gaslight every expert and pretend this wasn’t his fault.

Speaking about an operation that has seen zero US soldiers die in the last 18 months, Mr Biden claimed he could no longer put lives at risk.

Just hours earlier, footage had shown people falling out the sky, having risked holding onto a plan to escape the Taliban takeover in Kabul. What he meant was some lives matter more than others.

Instead of taking responsibility, Mr Biden pandered to Americans who are tired of sending people abroad.

The US president is playing politics at home with a move that will see women become second-class citizens, opposition figures murdered and undo the steps taken in the past 20 years.

America is no longer the “leader of the free world”, and any idea of the West as a united force against oppressors is dead.

The UK Government must now decide whether to welcome as many of those the West failed as possible, or follow Mr Biden in washing its hands of tragically avoidable disaster.

There will be no happy ending, there is no solution. All that remains is to pick up the pieces.

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