The big picture: Officials inside the Biden administration were stunned by the speed of the Taliban’s conquete of Afghanistan and the collapse of the Afghan security forces. But Biden stands by his decision to withdraw from the country, despite the likely humanitarian catastrophe that it has set off, Sullivan told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“We spent 20 years, tens of billions of dollars training the [Afghan security forces], giving them equipment, giving them support of U.S. forces, for 20 years,” Sullivan said.

“The question facing the president back in April, and again as we’ve gone forward, is should U.S. men and women be put into the middle of another country’s civil war when their own army won’t fight to defend them? And his answer to that question was no.”