welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i m karishma vaswani. the headlines. biden defiant the us president defends his decision to withdraw american troops from afghanistan following the swift taliban takeover. i stand squarely behind my decision. after 20 years, i ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw us forces. desperate scenes at kabul airport, with people clinging to moving planes trying to flee the country. taliban militants patrol the streets of the capital there s widespread fear the regime will bring repression. an uncertain future
for more than a decade. he believes it s time for the american presence to leave afghanistan. this is something he firmly believes in. he doesn t want another son or daughter american life lost over there. how it happened, how the evacuation went down, that s another matter but there are few people defending it. the president said yesterday i ll take criticism on this because it s part of his convictions. it is definitely just past the top of the hour on this tuesday, august 17th. and president biden addressed the nation for the first time since the taliban takeover of afghanistan, expressing surprise it happened so quickly, but defending his decision to end american involvement after two decades. nbc news chief white house correspondent peter alexander has more. reporter: rushing back to washington as images emerge of chaos in kabul. president biden defiant and without regret.
it s still open. fast forward five or six days, and suddenly everyone s being evacuated. now, people on the ground understand that president biden s primary duty is to the american people and to ensuring their security, and i don t think anybody would begrudge that, but there is a sense that they ve simply been cast aside and abandoned, and there s a huge amount of heartache and a huge amount of resentment about that. you know, one of the things of course they re worried about as the u.s. leaves are these encounters that they may be having with the taliban, and you know, just going back to the taliban leadership saying that to its fighters, you re shouldn t be going door to door. there have been reports that that actually has been happening, clarissa whether it s female journalists or special forces, afghan special forces who were involved in the fight with americans. can you tell us anything about that? reporter: so i ve been talking to some people this
national security correspondent for the new york times. david, it s really interesting because the president really pushing his decision to completely withdraw troops from the u.s., that s something that s popular with americans. it s also kind of a moot point because there s no going tobackn it. right now what s happening in afghanistan, is afghan allies trapped in kabul, even trapped outside of kabul, can t get to the airport, is the president going to make good, do you think, on his promise to take care of these afghan allies? it s a fascinating question, briana, and it s not clear that he would be able to given how quickly things unfolded. the speech was remarkable, i thought, for the fact that the president went through his justification for pulling out, and one could be in support of that as i think many democrats and republicans and trump supporters are and still ask the question why didn t this
welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i m karishma vaswani. the headlines. biden defiant the us president defends his decision to withdraw american troops from afghanistan following the swift taliban takeover. i stand squarely behind my decision. after 20 years, i ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw us forces. desperate scenes at kabul airport, with people clinging to moving planes trying to flee the country. taliban militants patrol the streets of the capital there s widespread fear the regime will bring repression. an uncertain future