| Evacuations of Americans, allied personnel, and thousands of Afghan translators, interpreters and their families from the chaotic Kabul airport could stretch beyond the Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, President Biden said Sunday, despite efforts to speed the exodus from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan (The Hill). Biden, who defended his decisions and rejected responsibility for the calamitous Afghanistan exit playing out in the capital, said he may be forced to adjust the deadline, although he said he and his team hope “we won’t have to extend.” “I’m convinced I’m absolutely correct,” he said of his decision to end the war and withdraw the remaining 2,500 U.S. forces by the end of this month. The president, speaking in the Roosevelt Room for 20 minutes after being briefed by top foreign policy and defense advisers on Sunday, said again that any Americans in Afghanistan who want to get out will be able to leave. He acknowledged the difficulty and dangers they and Afghans are facing while attempting to flee. He touted the Taliban’s assurances so far that Islamist militants will not harm U.S. troops or Americans who are departing, but he also described his unwillingness to trust “just talk.” Biden acknowledged “pain and loss” felt by Afghans who say they are petrified they will be tortured or killed by Taliban fighters. “We’ll see,” he said of Taliban pledges, acknowledging frenzy on the ground, danger to U.S. troops and the potential for terror attacks. “My heart aches for those people,” he added. Reuters: Afghan guard killed Monday at Kabul airport by gunman during a firefight also involving U.S., German troops. Biden said U.S. military at the Kabul airport were “moving back the perimeter significantly” to create a larger safe zone and adjusting “access around the airport” and entry gates that are accessible to Americans. He declined to comment on whether U.S. forces were entering the capital or other locations in Afghanistan to extract Americans and Afghans now in harm’s way. “I think you’ll see more Afghans get out,” he said without being specific. 
© Getty Images CNN: ISIS terror threat forces U.S. military to establish alternate routes to the Kabul airport. NATO said at least 20 people died over seven days in Kabul from shootings and being crushed by crowds near the airport (Reuters). Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, did not rule out on Sunday that additional U.S. troops could be deployed to Afghanistan to complete the evacuation. “Every single day, the president asks his military commanders, including those at the airport and those at the Pentagon, whether they need additional resources, additional troops. So far, the answer has been no,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” (The Hill). The Hill: Biden grapples with twin crises. To hasten the slow pace of withdrawal, the U.S. military is flying eligible families out of Kabul to military bases in secondary countries, where they are processed, undergo security screenings and may wind up as refugees in a wide array of host countries. The Pentagon over the weekend requested civilian passenger air carriers willing to help transport Afghans from staging points at air bases outside of Afghanistan to their designated next stops, including in the United States (The Hill). Secretary of State Antony Blinken (pictured below with Sullivan) explained the intermediary stops are in nearly two dozen other participating countries where emergency processing of Afghans can continue. “We need more planes in the mix to do that piece of it, to move them from these initial points of landing on to places that they’ll ultimately resettle,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” The Hill: Exits are subject to Afghanistan’s rulers, Blinken says. Taliban “are in control of Kabul. That is the reality.” Biden said 11,000 people got out of Afghanistan over the weekend during a 36-hour period, which he called “an incredible operation” and a pace he believes can be sustained. Tens of thousands of people still want to leave.
Some allied governments drawn into the Kabul crisis are critical of the United States, although Biden says he has not heard such criticism during his conversations with counterparts (The Hill). The president said he will participate with Group of Seven leaders in a videoconference Tuesday to discuss the Afghanistan situation. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government as part of the G-7 meeting will push for economic sanctions against the Taliban under certain circumstances (India Today).
The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that British officials have skewered Biden, and that aides serving Biden were “afraid” to challenge the president’s withdrawal decision and Sullivan’s assumptions about how the withdrawal of forces would proceed. This line of public puzzlement is a theme among critics of the administration in Congress, including some Democrats, as well as among U.S. and international analysts and experts. Is Biden’s supposed foreign policy expertise frozen in 2009? Did he reach a decision to pull out all U.S. forces from Afghanistan and turn a deaf ear to naysayers who warned about the Afghan army’s weakness, or did fresh intelligence about Afghan corruption and the Taliban never move up the chain to the president’s attention because his perspective was known? “He came in, and he wasn’t going to listen,” asserted New York Times Pentagon correspondent Helene Cooper during an NBC discussion on Sunday about Biden’s approach to the war in Afghanistan. On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked, “Does the president not know what’s going on?” Biden’s evolving, sometimes contradictory and occasionally outright false assertions since July about Afghanistan and the situation in Kabul resulted in tough fact-checking beginning on Friday and continuing through the weekend. Central to oversight hearings expected on Capitol Hill is why Biden and administration officials insist “nobody predicted” the rapid fall of the Afghan government, an assertion contradicted by reporting last week but repeated on Sunday by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during an exchange on ABC’s “This Week.” In fact, there were U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and government watchdog predictions that the Afghan government was vulnerable to defeat by the Taliban. "It was a very hollow government and a hollow military," John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan, told CBS News. Last week, he issued a “Lessons” report, one of many assessments he has released since 2012 based on his inspections in Afghanistan. His final report included excerpts from more than 700 interviews he conducted with senior administration officials. Douglas Lute, who served as a special adviser to former Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, told Sopko, "We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. It's really much worse than you think." Ryan Crocker, a former career ambassador in the Obama administration who held the top diplomatic job in Afghanistan and Iraq, is quoted in the report as saying the Afghan national police were “useless as a security force, and they're useless as a security force because they are corrupt down to the patrol level.” CBS News: Crocker, during a Sunday interview, called the administration’s execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan “catastrophic.” Axios: No Biden firings likely, sources say. The Hill: Sunday talk shows — Afghanistan’s collapse in the spotlight. 
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