Afghan Mission Was "Never About Nation-Building", Says Biden

While addressing a press conference on Afghanistan crisis, US President Joe Biden said, "We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals, get those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and make sure Al-Qaeda can't use Afghanistan as a base to attack us again. We did that". "We severely degraded Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, we never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and we got him, which was a decade ago," said Biden. "Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation-building or to be creating a unified, centralised democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland. I've argued for many years that our mission should be narrowly focused on counter-terrorism, not counter insurgency or nation-building," he further added. (Video credit: ANI)