President Joe Biden announced that US forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by August 31st, earlier than the previous deadline his administration had announced, as Afghanistan returns to an ongoing civil war, NBC News reports.

“We did not go to Afghanistan to nation build,” Biden said in a speech at the White House. “It’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”

Biden said that military commanders had been planning for the withdraw since he announced his intention to take the remaining troops out of the country, and that the withdraw was occuring in a “secure and orderly way.”  Biden also vowed that the United States would assist in evacuating thousands of native Afghan translators and their families to the United States, an issue that had become a public cause for veterans serving in Congress and the US intelligence community. 

Predictably, Republicans voiced their disapproval Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.  “It is not in America’s national security interest for the Taliban to take over Afghanistan,” Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said Tuesday. “If the Taliban take over part of Afghanistan, I fear that al Qaeda and ISIS will re-emerge and we’ll be paving the way for another 9/11.”

The Taliban has made significant territorial gains in the last couple of months, with government forces holding and defending most major cities in the country.