Presented by Climate Power

Good morning, Playbookers. It's Tuesday, August 17th. I'm Rogumana Vollen.

And this is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

Before President Joe Biden took the podium to address the situation in Afghanistan,

former Obama White House senior official

David Axelrod was on CNN giving him some free advice.

You cannot defend the execution here. This has been a disaster. You know, it is heartbreaking.

It is depressing. And it's a failure. And he needs to own that failure.

As Axelrod said after, Biden did anything but.

He admitted no tactical errors and said he had no regrets.

Even as he asserted that, quote, the butt stops with me.

Biden pointed fingers at everyone but himself.

Donald Trump tied his hands with his deal with the Taliban.

The Afghan army wasn't

willing to fight, and some civilians didn't initially want to leave. Most of all, he defended

the pullout that he's been advocating for years. If anything, the developments of the past week

reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.

American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war

that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

Of course, that's not the issue. Republicans, as well as many in the media, were quick to

point out that he seemed to be suggesting a false choice between an indefinite presence in Afghanistan

and a bundled evacuation. But Biden is making a political calculation here, that everyday

...