Biden: Military Isn't The Way To Deal With Human Rights Issues

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Frantic evacuations continue in Afghanistan as President Biden publicly defends the way in which the withdrawal of U.S. troops was conducted. And in an interview with ABC on Wednesday, Biden said that using military force to deal with human rights issues was "not rational."

This episode: congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, international correspondent Jackie Northam, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Dan in Atlanta. For most of my runs, I listened to this podcast for the first 15 minutes,
0:07.2	but for the rest of the time, many times my breathing becomes
0:10.8	this podcast was recorded at one o eight p.m. on Thursday, August 19th. Anyway, here's a show.
0:30.6	I've pressed he runs longer than 15 minutes. That's more than most of my runs.
0:34.8	Well, I guess he's keeping up the pace there. Either it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Kelsey Snal,
0:42.0	like cover Congress, and I must my collar. They cover the White House. And we have NPR International
0:47.8	correspondent Jackie Northam here. Hi, Jackie. Hi, we're glad to have you here because we are again
0:53.2	talking about Afghanistan. President Biden largely reiterated his defense of the Afghanistan
0:58.8	withdrawal in an interview with ABC News yesterday, saying that some chaos was inevitable.
1:04.3	The idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos and
1:09.3	suing. I don't know how that happens. We're going to talk more about that in a second,
1:14.1	but first Jackie, can you tell us more about what's happening on the ground in Afghanistan right now?
1:19.0	Are people still being allowed to evacuate? Well, in theory, yes, they are allowed to evacuate,
1:25.9	but that's really not what's happening on the ground. You know, just to back up, the U.S. says
1:30.8	they're going to try and get about 500 people an hour out of the country. So the operation is
1:35.5	kicking into gear. The big problem, though, is getting to the airport. You know, it's a very long
1:41.7	road that leads up to the airport. And there are Taliban checkpoints all along the way.
1:47.1	It appears that all Westerners are getting through, but armed militants are making it really
1:52.3	difficult for Afghans trying to get, you know, to the tarmac. And there are reports of them
1:56.2	ripping up people's documents and not allowing them to go any further. And I've been looking at,
2:03.4	social media today, and you're seeing all sorts of images just highlighting the chaos there.
2:08.1	You know, there's guns firing and you see militants whipping Afghans and people screaming and
	...

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