President Joe Biden addressed the nation Monday afternoon, defending his decision to end the war in Afghanistan after 20 years of combat.

Despite public backlash from Republicans, Biden said he remained committed to ending America’s longest war, which cost roughly $1 trillion over 20 years in fighting the Taliban and training Afghan forces. There were 2,448, U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan through April as well as 3,846 U.S. contractors.

The death toll for Afghans was substantial, with 51,191 Taliban and opposition deaths, as well as 66,000 Afghan national military and police and 47,245 Afghan civilian deaths, according to the Associate Press.

“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation-building,” Biden said in the national address.

Biden touched on former President Donald Trump’s decision to bring U.S. forces out of Afghanistan by May 1 and that U.S. forces had drawn down from roughly 15,500 to 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.

“I stand squarely behind my decision, after 20 years, I learned the hard way, there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces,” Biden said.

"American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight themselves."

“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them with the will to fight for that future. If Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that in one more year, five more years or 20 more years that the U.S. military boots on the ground would have made any difference.

"Here is what I believe to my core, it is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not,” Biden told reporters.

Biden asked his critics how many more generations of Americans would have to be sent to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghans are not willing to fight it.

“How many more lives is it worth?” he said.

Biden discussed his current mission in Afghanistan was to deploy 6,000 troops to assist the departure of U.S. and allied personnel from the country and to evacuate Afghan allies to safety.

Operation Allies Refugee has moved 2,000 Afghans eligible for immigration visas to the U.S. and will soon move more.

Biden said he wants to get “our people and our allies” to safety and that the current events are proof that no amount of military force would stabilize Afghanistan and the mission made many missteps over the past two decades.

“I know my decision will be criticized, but I would rather take all that criticism than pass this decision on to another president,” Biden said.

Afghanistan