Joe Biden: “about 2 months ago I spent half a week in the Afghan capital city of Kabul, and virtually every conversation I had…”

“about 2 months ago I spent half a week in the Afghan capital city of Kabul, and virtually every conversation I had during my time there revolved around a single question: Would America stay the course? After all our successful military actions, after all our promises on reconstruction, after all our commitments to prevent Afghanistan from relapsing into chaos and warlordism, would we really have the stomach to get the job done? Whether I was talking to refugees living in bestial squalor, or to Chairman Karzai in a palace where the electricity barely functione; Whether I was talking to NATO soldiers in the international security force, to representatives of the U.N. and international humanitarian groups, or to our own American servicemen and servicewomen so valiantly risking their lives for a just cause; whoever I was talking to, the questions remained basically the same: Would we have the steadiness, determination, and commitment to remain engaged? Would we demonstrate the leadership necessary to keep the international coalition together? Would we maintain our resolve for the long haul, once the immediate battles had been won and our nation's attention had started to turn away from this remote and forbidding part of the world? I will tell you now what I told them then: We can, we must, and we will.”