ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのPsaki gives White House news briefing alongside National Security Adviser Sullivan

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Jen. And hello, everybody. I’m going to start with just an update, in terms of the President’s engagement today in engaging with his national security team, and then make a few comments, broadly, on the situation. And then I’ll be happy to take your questions.
This morning, the President spoke with his military commanders for an operational briefing on the security at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, commonly known as HKAI. He spoke with Secretary Austin, Chairman Milley, General McKenzie, Admiral Vasely, and myself. The President was briefed that DOD personnel have now secured HKAI, HKAI is open, and U.S. military evacuation flights are taking off.
Following this operational briefing with his military commanders, the President and the Vice President met by secure videoconference with their national security team to hear intelligence, security, and diplomatic updates on the evolving situation in Afghanistan. They discussed the status of ongoing evacuations of U.S. citizens, SIV applicants, and other vulnerable Afghans at risk, and how we would do this safely and efficiently and with the laser-focus of the team on monitoring for and preventing any potential terrorist threats at or around HKAI, including from ISIS-K.
They were joined by Secretary Blinken, Secretary Austin, Chairman Milley, Director Haines, Director Burns, myself, Ambassador Wilson, Ambassador Khalilzad, General McKenzie, and other senior officials.
Just to say a few words about where we come from and where we are: I want to start by saluting our troops and our civilian personnel at the Kabul Airport. I want to salute the Defense Department, the intelligence community, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and especially our country team in Kabul, who have been doing incredible work under very trying circumstances.
They have safely and effectively drawn down our embassy compound and retrograded our diplomatic personnel.
They have now secured the airfield and are conducting flights out of the country.
They are moving American citizens as well as Afghan nationals and third-country nationals.
They are facilitating flights for our allies and partners to get citizens and others out of Afghanistan.
These operations will continue in the coming days as we move to evacuate American citizens and Afghan nationals who worked with us, along with other vulnerable Afghans.
We are engaging diplomatically, at the same time, with allies and regional countries and with the United Nations to address the situation in Afghanistan.
We are in contact with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of people to the airport.
We are monitoring for any potential terrorist threats, as I just mentioned, including from ISIS-K.
We intend to continue these operations over the coming days before completing our drawdown.
When you work on any policy issue — domestic policy, foreign policy, any policy issue — the human costs and consequences loom large. And we’re all contending with the human costs of these developments. The images from the past couple of days at the airport have been heartbreaking.
But President Biden had to think about the human costs of the alternative path as well, which was to stay in the middle of a civil conflict in Afghanistan.
There are those who argue that with 2,500 forces — the number of forces in country when President Biden took office — we could have sustained a stable, peaceful Afghanistan. That is simply wrong.
The previous administration drew down from 15,000 troops to 2,500. And even at 15,000, the Afghan government forces were losing ground.
What has unfolded over the past month has proven decisively that it would have taken a significant American troop presence, multiple times greater than what President Biden was handed, to stop a Taliban onslaught.
And we would have taken casualties. American men and women would have been fighting and dying once again in Afghanistan, and President Biden was not prepared to send additional forces or ask any American personnel to do that over the period ahead.
There have been questions raised about whether we should have drawn down our embassy and evacuated our Afghan allies earlier. These are reasonable questions.
We did dramatically accelerate the SIV process and move out a substantial number of SIV applicants and their families.
But the Afghan government and its supporters, including many of the people now seeking to leave, made a passionate case that we should not conduct a mass evacuation lest we trigger a loss of confidence in the government. Now, our signaling support for the government obviously did not save the government, but this was a considered judgment.
When you conclude 20 years of military action in a civil war in another country with the impacts of 20 years of decisions that have piled up, you have to make a lot of hard calls, none with clean outcomes. What you can do is plan for all contingencies. We did that.
The American forces now on the ground at HKAI are there because of contingency planning and drilling we did over the course of months, preparing for a range of scenarios, including dire scenarios.
President Biden ordered multiple battalions to be pre-positioned in theater, and he activated them for deployment before the fall of Kabul. He also put additional battalions on a short string here in the United States. Those battalions have now flowed in as well.
Yes, there were chaotic scenes yesterday. But as Admiral Kirby said, even well drawn plans don’t survive first contact with reality and they require adjustments. And we’ve made those adjustments.
We will stay in close touch with our allies and partners in the days ahead as we contend with the immediate need to complete the evacuation mission and as we deal with the broader challenges posed by the new reality in Afghanistan.
And we will remain persistently vigilant against the terrorism threat in Afghanistan and in multiple other theaters across multiple continents.
We have proven in other places that we can suppress terrorism without a permanent military presence on the ground, and we intend to do exactly that in Afghanistan.
And with that, I would be happy to take to take your questions. Yes.
Q So, I wanted to ask — the President yesterday said that the buck stops with him. I want to get an understanding of what did he mean by — what is he taking ownership of? Not just the decision to leave Afghanistan, but is he taking responsibility for the chaos that happened during the evacuations, for the decisions not to do evacuations sooner? For all — is he taking responsibility for that and for any bloodshed that may be happening right now? Is he taking responsibility for that?
MR. SULLIVAN: He’s taking responsibility for every decision the United States government took with respect to Afghanistan, because, as he said, the buck stops with him.
I am also taking responsibility and so are my colleagues: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the directors of our intelligence agencies. We, as a national security team, collectively take responsibility for every decision — good decision, every decision that doesn’t produce perfect outcomes. That is what responsibility is.
Now, at the same time, that doesn’t change the fact that there are other parties here responsible as well who have taken actions and decisions that helped lead us to where we are. So, from our perspective, what we have to do now is focus on the task at hand, the mission at hand.
You mentioned chaos at the airport yesterday. At the end of the day, the question is: Can we effectively evacuate those people who we intend to evacuate? And that is what we are planning for and executing against, beginning today — where the airport is secure, the flights are going, the people are coming. And we will continue to do that in the days ahead. Yes.
Q Yeah. What is President Biden’s response to the people of Afghanistan who are now in the hands of the Taliban terrorists and feel abandoned by the United States, or to those in Taiwan and elsewhere that are fearful that the U.S. will abandon them to the aggression of China?
And a follow-up to that is: What is President Biden’s response to people in Israel and other countries who might also believe the U.S. will abandon them to terrorists?
MR. SULLIVAN: So, to the first question, President Biden and all of us, as I said in my opening comments, are heartbroken by the human consequences that have unfolded and could continue to unfold in Afghanistan.
We believe passionately in human rights and human dignity, and we want to work with the international community to advance that wherever we can.
But President Biden was not prepared to have American men and women continue to fight and die in the civil war of another country in order to achieve that. We will use every other tool at our disposal to achieve that, and we will do so day after day, month after month in the period ahead on behalf of the people of Afghanistan.
To your question about allies: We gave 20 years of American blood, treasure, sweat, and tears in Afghanistan. We gave them every capacity, in terms of training and equipment, to stand up and fight for themselves. And at some point, it was the time for the United States to say that the Afghan people had to stand up for themselves.
We believe that our commitments to our allies and partners are sacrosanct and always have been. We believe our commitment to Taiwan and to Israel remains as strong as it’s ever been.
Keep in mind that, with respect to Afghanistan, we said back in 2011 that we would be out in 2014. We stayed another seven years — far and above and beyond the commitment that we made more than a decade ago.
And the last thing that I would say is that President Biden is laser-focused on accomplishing the core national security objectives of the United States. And when it comes to Afghanistan, that was getting bin Laden and degrading al Qaeda. We accomplished that, and he believes it was time for our troops to come home. Yes.
Q So, just now, Jake, you described a kind of choice that the President — that was in front of the President: either save the — you know, save the folks, the allies in Afghanistan, the folks that helped the United States through the last two decades, or sacrifice more American young men.
I think the question out there on Capitol Hill and around Washington and elsewhere is: Wasn’t there another choice? Wasn’t there a way you could have ended — President Biden could have ended the war in the way that he wanted to end the war so that Americans don’t sacrifice further lives for this war, but, at the same time, do a better job of either ignoring Ghani’s, you know, request to — to not start evacuations or, you know, figuring some way that we wouldn’t end up in a situation where there’s masses of people crushing through the airport and the execution of the last four, five, six days that has seemed, to just about everybody, as not — I mean, as not the way a competent administration — you know, not the result that a competent administration, you know, has in the end?
So, was it — isn’t that a false choice? And why couldn’t you do both?
MR. SULLIVAN: So, first, what I would say is that we were clear-eyed going in when we made this decision that it was possible that the Taliban would end up in control of Afghanistan. We were clear-eyed about that.
Now, as the President said in his remarks yesterday, we did not anticipate that it would happen at this speed, though we were planning for these potential contingencies.
The reason I say that at the outset — that we knew it was possible they could take over and that had to be built into our calculus in making the determination, as the President did, to draw down our forces — is because once the Taliban came into Kabul, we were going to be faced with a situation — no matter if there were still U.S. troops on the ground or no U.S. troops on the ground — of dealing with a significant number of people wanting to come to an airport to try to get evacuated.
I’ll give you an example: We communicated with American citizens for weeks, telling them to get out of the country. We offered financial assistance for those who wouldn’t be able to afford to get on flights themselves. Many chose to stay right until the end, and that was their choice. We now are faced with a circumstance where we have to help evacuate those. That’s our responsibility as the U.S. government.
But the point I’m making is that when a civil war comes to an end with an opposing force marching on the capital, there are going to be scenes of chaos, there are going to be lots of people leaving the country. That is not something that can be fundamentally avoided.
And so, while it is a point for reasonable debate, in my view, as to how to think about the right moment to signal a complete loss of confidence in a government or not and which is going to lead to more suffering and death or not, the fact is that we made the judgments we made based on the information we had at the time, while preparing for the alternative contingency, which was having to flow in these troops to be able to get out folks in a mass evacuation. Yes.
Q Thank you, Jake. Do you believe that the mission could be completed by August 31st? As the National Security Advisor, what do you see the scenario on September 1st? Do you think the Taliban of 2021 is different than 2001? Do you see analogous situation to Iraq, where a new terrorist organization would be born — like ISIS out of the (inaudible) in Iraq, for example?
MR. SULLIVAN: So, just on the last point: It’s fairly well documented that the Taliban and ISIS-K fight one another, struggle against one another. So, I do not foresee a symbiotic relationship there — though these are dynamics scenarios, so we will have to see how it plays.
We are working day by day to get as many people out, so I’m not going to speculate on the timetable question that you just laid out.
And then finally, on what we expect from the Taliban going forward, that is something that will have to be watched and observed over time. Whether in fact they are prepared to meet their obligations to the basic human rights and human dignity of people, to the safe passage of people to the airport, to the fair and — fair and just treatment of civilians, that is something they’re going to have to show.
I come at this with no expectations, but only a sense that they will have to prove to the international community who they ultimately are going to end up being. Yes.
Q Thank you, Jake. Can you tell us what is it exactly — the commitment that you have secured from the Taliban, regarding the safe passage of Americans as well as the tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans?
MR. SULLIVAN: The Taliban have informed us that they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment.
Q Do you believe them?
MR. SULLIVAN: Yes. (Calling on another reporter.)
Q Just for clarity on that, is there some deadline that’s been set? Has the Taliban given assurances that this will go until August 31st? Is the deadline before that or after that? For clarity on what you just said.
MR. SULLIVAN: Until — we believe that this can go until the 31st. We are talking to them about what the exact timetable is for how this will all play out. And I don’t want to negotiate in public on working out the best modality to get the most people out in the most efficient way possible.
Q So let me — let me —
Q Jake, can I follow on that?
MR. SULLIVAN: Yes.
Q Thank you, Jake. I have a question about that. Yesterday, President Biden said that the United States military cannot sacrifice — sacrifice where there is no national interest. If the same (inaudible), would the U.S. withdraw troops from its allies, including South Korea? What (inaudible)?
MR. SULLIVAN: So, the President, as he has said repeatedly, has no intention of drawing down our forces from South Korea or from Europe, where we have sustained troop presences for a very long time — not in the middle of a civil war, but to deal with the potential of an external enemy and to protect our ally against that external enemy. So, it is a fundamentally different kind of situation from the one we were presented with in Afghanistan.