The Afghanistan pullout won’t be like the fall of Saigon, and the Taliban isn’t likely to take over
PREDICTED BY: PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, JULY 8

Last summer, as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban steadily regained territory throughout the country, Biden held a press conference where he was asked about the historical “echoes” some veterans of the Vietnam War saw between the fall of Saigon and the Afghanistan pullout. Asked if he saw “parallels” between the two events, Biden — who, by the way, was a U.S. senator when Saigon fell in spring 1975 — was insistent.

“The Taliban is not the South — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,” he said. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy … of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable. … The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

Just over one month later, in mid-August, Chinook helicopters airlifted Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as it evacuated. The Taliban surrounded and retook Kabul; it is now fully in control of the government of Afghanistan.