It's with our diplomacy, our economic tool and rallying the world to join us.
Let me lay out the current mission in Afghanistan.
I was asked to authorize and I did 6,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan for the purpose of assisting the departure of U.S. and allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside of Afghanistan.
Our troops are working to secure the air field and ensure continued operation both the civilian and military flights.
We're taking over air traffic control.
We have safely shut down our embassy and transferred our diplomats.
Our diplomatic presence is now consolidated at the airport as well.
Over the coming days we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan.
We'll also continue to support the safe departure civilian personnel, civilian personnel of our allies who are still serving in Afghanistan.
Operation allies REV JEW which I announced back in July has already moved 2000 Afghans who are eligible for special immigration visas and their families to the United States.
In the coming days U.S. military will provide assistance to move more SIB eligible Afghans and their families out of Afghanistan.
We're also expanding refugee access to cover other vulnerable Afghans who worked for our embassy.
U.S. non-government agency or the U.S. non-governmenttal organization and Afghans who otherwise are at great risk and U.S. news agencies.
I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner.
Part of the answer some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country.
Partly because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering as they said crisis confidence.
American troops are performing this mission as professionally and as effectively as they always do.
But it is not without risk.
As we carry out this departure, we have made it clear to the Taliban if they attack our personnel or disrupt our operation, the U.S. presence will be swift and the response will be swift and forceful.
We will defend our perople with devastating force, if necessary.
Our current military mission will be short in time, limited in scope and focused in its objectives.
Yet our people and our allies as safely, as quickly as possible and once we have completed this mission, we will conclude our military with drawal, we'll end America's longest war after 20 long years of blood shed.
The events we're seeing now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure Afghanistan.
That's known in history as the graveyard of empires.
What's happening now could just as easily happen five years ago or 15 years in the future.
You have to be honest, our mission in Afghanistan has taken many missteps, made many missteps over the past two decades.
I'm now the fourth American president to preside over gar in Afghanistan, two democrats and two republicans.
I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president.
I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference, nor will I shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here.
I am president of the United States of America and the buck stops with me.
I'm deeply saddend by the facts we now face.
But I do not regret my decision to end America's war fighting in Afghanistan and maintain a laser focus on our counter terrorism mission there and other parts of the world, a mission to degrade the terrorist threat of al-Qaida in Afghanistan and kill Osama bin laden was a success from a decades long effort to overcome centuries of history and permanently change and remaining Afghanistan was not, and I wrote and believed it never could be.
I cannot and will not ask our troops to fight on endlessly in another country's civil war, taking casualty, suffering life-shattering injuries, leaving families broken by grief and loss.
This is not in our national security interests.
It is not what the American people want.
It is not what you're troops who have sacrificed so much over the past two decades deserve.
I made a commitment to the American people when I ran for president that I would bring America's military involvement in Afghanistan to an end.
While it's been hard and messy and yes far from perfect, I've honored that commitment.
More Importantly I made a commitment to the brave men and women who serve this nation that I wasn't going to ask them to continue to risk their lives in the military action that should have ended long ago.
Our leaders did that in Vietnam when I got here as a young man.
I vill not do it in Afghanistan.
I know my decision will be criticized.
But I would rather take all that criticism and pass this decision on to another president of the United States, yet another one, a fifth one, because it's the right one, the right decision for our people, the right one for our brief service members who risked their lives serving our nation, and it's the right one for America.
Thank you and GOD protect our troops, our diplomats, all brave Americans serving in harm's way.
*2 Garfield, Eugene (June 1998).
“The Impact Factor and Using It Correctly”. Der Unfallchirurg 101 (6): 413?414. PMID 9677838.
ttp://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/derunfallchirurg_v101(6)p413y1998english.html
