What is the policy? The president’s press conference today was clear on the most important point: Biden stood by his vow to end the war, and to do it as quickly as possible. That’s important, but no one really doubted that he would stick to his long-term objective.

The rest of his policy is far less clear. Biden’s prepared remarks detoured through his son’s death and a quote from the Old Testament, which might have been appropriate for a stump speech but seemed out of place in a press briefing during a crisis. (And make no mistake: This is a crisis, both political and military.) Worse, the president’s noted temper flared for a moment when he fenced with a Fox News reporter over his predecessor’s responsibility for the timetable of the pullout. Biden was right: From the start, he has been hamstrung by reckless agreements that Donald Trump made with the Taliban. But arguing with bad-faith interlocutors is never a good idea, especially in a time of crisis.

When pressed on whether the United States was prepared for the chaos in Kabul, Biden’s answers boiled down to affirming that he was giving the military full latitude to decide how to handle the situation. He said, for example, that we had not kept control of Bagram Air Base because the military thought it unnecessary. (That locates the source of the decision, but it doesn’t explain very much; if we knew we were going to be evacuating tens of thousands of people, why did the military hand over Bagram?)