President Biden said he stands “squarely behind” his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, speaking from the White House Monday as he drew bipartisan criticism over the swift collapse of the government and the ensuing chaos.

He acknowledged that the Taliban took control of the country more quickly than he expected and that the U.S. exit has been “far from perfect,” although he took little responsibility for that. He called the images of desperate Afghans at Kabul’s international airport trying to flee their country gut-wrenching.

While pledging to get Americans and U.S. allies out of the country safely, Mr. Biden cast much of the blame for the fall of the Afghan government on its American-trained military for failing to take up the fight with the Taliban.

“If anything, the developments in the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” he 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 for themselves.”