Fact-checking Biden’s speech on the end of the Afghan war
District of Columbia | September 1, 2021
We will leave it to the political pundits to critique President Biden’s speech on the Afghanistan withdrawal. The president tried to rebut a number of complaints about his handling of the evacuation. There are reasonable arguments for either side — and in any case, the judgment will be up to history.
But there were a number of factual claims that are worthy of scrutiny.
“The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban.”
By our count, this is now the sixth time Biden has used this Three-Pinocchio figure. It’s an inflated number, combining the military with the national police.
In a 2021 report, the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) found that Afghanistan had an active military force of 178,800; of these, 171,500 were in the army and 7,300 in the air force.
“Reports suggested that already high losses and high levels of desertion further increased in 2020,” the report said. “There was reported 22% personnel shortage in mid-2019, and there are problems in retaining key specialists including pilots and special-operations troops.”…( Excerpts from the Washington Post)