When U.S. President Joe Biden was asked at a news conference on Thursday whether there was any comparison between his withdrawal from Afghanistan and the United States’ humiliating retreat from Vietnam a half century ago, his response was unequivocal: “None whatsoever. Zero.”
The president went on to say that in the early 1970s, as the Vietnam War was grinding to a close, North Vietnam’s forces were far more powerful than the Taliban are today. “They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,” he said. “There’s going to be no circumstance when you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”
