Facing sharp criticism over the tumultuous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden says it was the best available option to end both the US's longest war and decades of fruitless efforts to remake other countries through military force.
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Biden portrayed the chaotic exit as a logistical success that would have been just as messy even if it had been launched weeks earlier, while staying in the country would have required committing more American troops.
"I was not going to extend this forever war," he said in a speech from the White House.
Earlier in on Tuesday, the Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan in a lightning advance this month, fired guns into the air and paraded coffins draped in US and NATO flags as they celebrated their victory.
In his first remarks since the final pullout of US forces on Monday, Biden said 5500 Americans had left and the US had leverage over the Islamist militant group to ensure 100 to 200 others could also depart if they wanted to.
He said Washington would continue to target militants who posed a threat to the US, but would no longer use its military to try to build democratic societies in places that had never had them.
"This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries," he said.
The Taliban now control more territory than before they were ousted in 2001 at the start of America's longest war, which took the lives of nearly 2500 US troops and an estimated 240,000 Afghans.
More than 123,000 people were removed from Kabul in a massive but chaotic airlift by the US and its allies in the past two weeks, but many of those who helped Western nations during the war were left behind.
Biden said the only other option would have been to step up the fight and continue a war that "should have ended long ago". Starting the withdrawal in June or July, as some have suggested, would only have hastened the Taliban's victory, he said.
But Biden's decision has faced criticism from Republicans and fellow Democrats, as well as from foreign allies.
US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the departure had abandoned Americans behind enemy lines.
"We are less safe as a result of this self-inflicted wound," he said.
The US invasion in 2001, which followed the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, stopped Afghanistan from being used by al-Qaeda as a base to attack the US and ended a period of Taliban rule from 1996 in which women were oppressed and opponents crushed.
There was a mixture of triumph, elation and fear on the streets of Afghanistan as the Taliban celebrated their victory.
"We are proud of these moments, that we liberated our country from a great power," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
While crowds lined the streets of the eastern city of Khost for a mock funeral with coffins draped with Western flags, long lines formed in Kabul outside banks closed since the fall of the capital.
"I had to go to the bank with my mother but when I went, the Taliban (were) beating women with sticks," said a 22-year-old woman who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"It's the first time I've seen something like that and it really frightened me."
The Taliban's previous government brutally enforced a radical interpretation of Islamic law but Biden has said the world would hold them to their recent commitments to uphold human rights and allow safe passage for those wanting to leave Afghanistan.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US was concerned about the potential for Taliban retribution and mindful of the threat posed by ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport on Thursday that killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghan civilians.
At least seven Taliban fighters were killed in clashes with anti-Taliban rebels in the Panjshir valley north of the capital on Monday night, the opposition group said.
Australian Associated Press
