July 8, 2021, East Room, Remarks by President Biden on the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan:

Q Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.

Q Why?

THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.

Q Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —

THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever. Zero. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable. … the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.

I live “out in the sticks” as sophisticated power brokers in Washington DC would call my suburb outside Portland, Oregon. I haven’t been to Afghanistan as a citizen, soldier or policy wonk. I haven’t sat in on any high-level foreign policy strategy meetings in the White House or debated military policy in a conference room at a D.C think tank. I haven’t been asked by President Biden or any of his hangers-on what we should do in Afghanistan.

But even I knew the battle-ready 300,000 man Afghan military force was a fiction and that it wouldn’t be long before American helicopters were rescuing desperate people from rooftops in Kabul in a debacle for the ages. Like everything else about the war in Afghanistan, it was all a lie.