Standing among US graves, Biden explains Afghanistan decision in personal terms

As President Joe Biden stood in the rain on Wednesday (Apr 14) among the tombstones of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan, thoughts of his late son Beau weren't definately not his mind as he explained his decision to begin America's exit from its longest war.

The president's elder son earned the Bronze Star while serving in Iraq from 2008-09. His death in 2015 from a brain tumor still haunts his father.

"I have trouble nowadays ever turning up at a cemetery not thinking about my son Beau, who proudly insisted on gaining that uniform and choosing his unit to Iraq and quitting his spot as legal professional general in the state of Delaware because he thought it had been the right thing to do," Biden told reporters at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington.

"Look at them all," Biden said, gesturing to the rows of white gravestones stretching behind him.

Beau Biden's military experience was among the reasons the president gave for deciding to withdraw all 2,500 US troops remaining in Afghanistan by Sep 11 in a televised speech prior to the cemetery visit.

"I’m the first president in 40 years who knows what this means to get a child serving in a war zone,” said Biden, speaking from the Treaty Room at the White House, where President George W Bush declared the beginning of the war in 2001.

"Throughout this technique, my North Star has been remembering what it had been like when my late son Beau was deployed to Iraq,” Biden said, and the impact it had on Beau and his family.

Biden said that since he became vice president in 2009 2009, he had carried a card of the precise number of US troops and personnel killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan - 2,488 dead in Afghanistan and 20,722 wounded as of Wednesday.

"Each one of those dead are sacred human beings who left out entire families," he said.

The war in Afghanistan commenced as a search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after he masterminded the Sep 11, 2001, attacks on america that turned Bush right into a war president.

US troop numbers in Afghanistan reached a peak of more than 100,000 in 2011. Afghan security forces are fighting an insurgency by the Islamist Taliban.

A complete withdrawal by Sep 11 made sense, Biden said on Wednesday, as the original mission - getting Osama bin Laden - have been achieved, and Afghanistan was no longer a safe haven for Islamist militants like him. Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by American forces in 2011.

"We already have service members doing their duty in Afghanistan today whose parents served in the same war. We've service members who weren't yet born when our nation was attacked in 9/11," Biden said in his speech, adding the war was never meant to be considered a multi-generational affair.

Was it a difficult decision? Biden was asked in Arlington.

“No, it wasn’t. To me, it was absolutely clear. Absolutely clear. ... From the beginning, you might recall, I never thought we were there to somehow unify ... Afghanistan. It’s never been done. It’s never been done," he said.