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Sept 14 (Reuters) - Three former U.S. presidents - Republican George W. Bush and Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama - have banded together behind a new group aimed at supporting refugees from Afghanistan settling in the United States following the recent American withdrawal ending 20 years of war.

The former leaders and their wives will serve as part of Welcome.US, a coalition of advocacy groups, U.S. businesses and other leaders.

It launched on Tuesday with a website that will be "a single point of entry," to make it easier for Americans to donate, host a refugee family through the home rental app Airbnb Inc (ABNB.O) or find other ways to help, John Bridgeland, an official in former President George W. Bush's administration and co-chair of the effort, said at a media event.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have already arrived in the United States as part of a U.S. evacuation. Many of them would have been at risk had they remained under the Taliban after their work with U.S. and allied troops or with American and international agencies.

"Thousands of Afghans stood with us on the front lines to push for a safer world, and now they need our help," Bush and his wife Laura said in a statement.

Organizers said there has been a bipartisan outpouring of support for Afghan refugees, including Republican and Democratic governors who have signed onto the effort.

A number of U.S. state and local leaders have said they would welcome refugees into their communities, although immigration remains a divisive issue in parts of the country.

Under former President Donald Trump, a Republican, refugee admissions from around the world were slashed to their lowest levels in decades, a policy President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has pledged to reverse.

Welcome.US also draws support from more than 280 people and entities, including U.S. businesses such as Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O)and Walmart Inc (WMT.N), as well as numerous nonprofit organizations, veterans' groups and resettlement agencies.

Biden's administration is working to accommodate as many as 50,000 refugees on military bases in the United States. Others remain in processing centers near U.S. airports where they landed, and more evacuees are in U.S. installations or stuck in third countries abroad.

Some refugee organizations have been pushing for the United States to adopt a program of private or community sponsorship for individual refugees, similar to a model used in Canada, and see this coordinated national volunteer effort as one way to jump-start that process.

"We want to take advantage of this moment and the great need to access all the capacity out there in the United States to support Afghan evacuees," Nazanin Ash of the International Rescue Committee said at Tuesday's launch.

(This story corrects to remove reference to CVS Health Corp and replace it with Walmart Inc in paragraph 9)

Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Susan Heavey in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Ross Colvin

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S. Ex-presidents Bush, Clinton, Obama band together to aid Afghan refugees - Reuters

I think a big part of it is that Obama does represent something that, in a boring and literal way, is undeniably true: this country had never had a black president. This is the root of the argument about representation: if there is somebody who is powerful and respected in the country, although everyone hates politicians, its the president and Obama looked good in these photos. He and his family looked very cool. They always looked like they were having fun, even when they were serious. The reason I recalled JFK in the piece is that thats who he most looked like. He looks like hes in Camelot. He looks good in a tux. He looks good in a suit.

And youve heard, for a long time, from white liberals and black conservatives and black liberals, that whats necessary is for black people to see themselves in positions of power. Thats what I wrote about in the section about the little kid that everybody finds very moving, where hes rubbing Barack Obamas head because he wants to see if his hair is just like his. This is one method of creating a post-racial utopia: its basically trickle-down liberation. If a black person, so the argument goes, can achieve the highest office in the land and look this good, then the belief is that it will trickle down. Which, to me, as much as people say that this is about uplift for black people and our understanding of ourselves and what we can achieve, has always really been addressed to white people. Because, if white people see that a black person can, in fact, occupy the office and that things dont go to hell when a black person is in charge, then perhaps some of their antipathies will lessen.

I do happen to think things went to hell under Obama, but I think theres a way you can read things otherwise mainly if youre silent about cities being on fire. Theres another potential way to read it, which is that youll gain liberation through seeing these photos and from seeing this image of the black elite projected every day. There was a black elite under Obama in a way that there had never really been before. Jay-Z and Beyonc were elite before Barack Obama, but theres a different game being played when theyre frequently visiting the White House and Jay-Z is rapping about having Obamas cell phone number. At that point, youre making a national argument that the black elite is the elite.

The problem with that is that its very hard to connect it to any real sense of redress for whats happening for most black people. Im quite deeply wary of this when Im in certain rooms, and people expect me to have something to say that represents all black people. I mean, I make movies and went to a private school, and I have nothing to tell them about whats going on other than what I know from talking to people and reading.

Theres two ways you can address whats happening now to black people. One is expressed in the belief that there is something about seeing black people that causes X, Y, or Z to happen and if thats true, then the representation argument is correct. You need to see black people in the White House, you need to see them in tuxes, you need to see them on billboards, and on Wall Street, or whatever. But if what youre actually talking about is capital, land, and premature death, then youre getting at the heart of whether or not black people can be folded into the national project. Im not so certain they can be, and I dont really think they should be.

When it comes to how you get to a post-racial society, there are to be a bit vulgar about it two paths you can walk. One is the Paul Gilroy route, which involves the premise that racism precedes race. That being the case, in order to find liberation, you have to go through a winding struggle, and on the other side, perhaps there isnt race in any way thats recognizable to us now. But between here and there is a revolution. The other route, which I think Obama is perhaps the best proponent of, is that through the achievements of a handful of black elites and some massive shift in everybodys psyche, you wind up in a place where America can reconcile all of these antagonisms.

I think Obama came probably as close as you can come to demonstrating whether that will work, and there probably are lots of people whose minds were changed. I also think the tail end of his presidency was marked by white nationalists marching in the streets and black people setting cities on fire. Part of why I was very interested in the visual representation of his presidency is that I think thats where he was at his best. He was very good in front of the camera. But also because this ultimately shows the failure and limits of this kind of representation, whether it winds up being on-screen or in his books or whatever. It cant really change the fact that were talking about violence. Were not really talking about how certain images make every individual in the country feel.

The implication of that sort of black excellence thing is that, if we see Obama in the White House, then we can rise out of the ghetto something that depends on a belief that people are in the ghetto by choice, as opposed to somebody keeping them there. So, by the end of his presidency (even before it became clear who was succeeding him), nobody had really come to terms with the fact that a black elite couldnt seem to do anything to stop working-class black people from marching and rioting. I think he got what he wanted, and what a lot of people wanted, which was a black elite that became the elite. But that being the case, theres not much they can say back to the people who are in the streets.

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Barack Obama, the Hollow Icon - Jacobin magazine

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IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

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Letter: Believe that it was Obama's plan to divide the nation - Daily Record-News

Three presidents and their wives stood somberly side by side at the National September 11 Memorial, sharing a moment of silence to mark the anniversary of the nation's worst terror attack with a display of unity.

President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton all gathered at the site where the World Trade Center towers fell two decades ago. They each wore blue ribbons and held their hands over their hearts as a procession marched a flag through the memorial, watched by hundreds of Americans gathered for the remembrance, some carrying photos of loved ones lost in the attacks.

Before the event began, a jet flew overhead in an eerie echo of the attacks, drawing a glance from Mr. Biden toward the sky.

Mr. Biden was a senator when hijackers commandeered four planes and executed the attack. Now he marks the 9/11 anniversary for the first time as commander in chief.

The president spent Saturday paying his respects at the trio of sites where the planes crashed, but he left the speech-making to others.

Instead, the White House released a taped address late Friday in which Mr. Biden spoke of the "true sense of national unity" that emerged after the attacks, seen in "heroism everywhere - in places expected and unexpected."

"To me that's the central lesson of September 11," he said. "Unity is our greatest strength."

Following the morning ceremony in New York City, Mr. Biden visited the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where a plane fell from the sky after heroic passengers fought terrorists to prevent it from reaching its Washington destination. And finally, he headed to the Pentagon, where the world's mightiest military suffered an unthinkable blow to its very home.

Former President George W. Bush, who was reading a book to Florida schoolchildren when the planes slammed into the World Trade Center, paid his respects in Shanksville. He said September 11 showed that Americans can come together despite their differences.

"So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment," said the president who was in office on 9/11. "On America's day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab their neighbor's hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America know."

"It is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been and what we can be again."

Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, skipped the official 9/11 memorial ceremonies and instead visited a fire station and police precinct in New York.

Mr. Biden's task, like his predecessors before him, was to mark the moment with a mix of grief and resolve. A man who has suffered immense personal tragedy, Mr. Biden speaks of loss with power.

He gave voice to the pain that comes with memories of 9/11 in his video message, saying, "No matter how much time has passed, these commemorations bring everything painfully back as if you just got the news a few seconds ago."

On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Mr. Biden now shoulders the responsibility borne by his predecessors to prevent future tragedy, and must do so against fresh fears of a rise in terror after the United States' hasty exit from Afghanistan, the country from which the September 11 attacks were plotted.

Evacuations continued in Afghanistan on Friday with an additional 21 U.S. citizens and 11 Lawful Permanent Residents fleeing Taliban rule, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. It came a day after the Taliban allowed a flight carrying Americans and other foreign nationals to depart the country for the first time since U.S. forces withdrew last month.

The State Department did not say how many Americans remain in Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Blinken estimated there were around 100 Americans still in the country who wanted to leave, adding that U.S. officials were in contact with all of them.

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Biden, Obama and Clinton mark 9/11 in New York with display of unity - CBS News

The 2011 military assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was so successful, it is possible to forget how difficult the U.S. Navy SEAL mission really was.

"The SEAL team that went into this, they didn't think they would make it back," said CBS News correspondent John Dickerson.

"That was a surprise to me," said Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. "One of the top CIA operatives, back watching the drone view back at Langley, at CIA Headquarters, fully expected that he was gonna see the compound just explode like a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie that the whole place was just gonna blow up."

The SEALs didn't know if bin Laden would even be there, and (if he was) if he'd be ringed by tripwires, bodyguards, and maybe Pakistani troops.

"In fact, [Rob] O'Neill called his particular team of the SEALs 'The Martyrs Brigade,' because he thought, 'We're gonna go out there, we're gonna do it, we're gonna avenge 9/11, we're gonna bring bin Laden to justice, but there's no way we're getting home,'" Wallace said.

O'Neill, the Navy SEAL credited with killing bin Laden, is just one of the characters in Wallace's new book, "Countdown bin Laden" (published by Simon & Schuster, a division of ViacomCBS), that traces 247 days leading up to that fateful moment.

Wallace said, "The president is making a decision about a raid that's gonna endanger the lives of a couple of dozen SEALs; that threatens relations with a very important ally, Pakistan; and, not so incidentally, probably betting his presidency."

Dickerson asked, "Where do you put this one in the history of tough presidential calls?"

"In terms of just the process, the professionalism, the care, the meticulousness, this is right at the top," Wallace replied.

Wallace's account isn't just about night vision goggles and stairway firefights; it also follows the painstaking puzzlework done at lonesome cubicles and in windowless conference rooms.

Wallace said, "The old line, 'The harder you work, the luckier you get'? They had worked as hard as I can't see anything more they could have done to give themselves a chance for success here."

It wasn't the only thing going on at the time, Wallace noted: "Obama has got a civil war in Libya; he's got the Arab Spring across the Middle East; he's got Donald Trump pushing the birther movement."

Four days before the raid, President Obama had to prove he was born in America.

"I'm speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press: We do not have time for this kind of silliness," the president said. "We've got better stuff to do."

Wallace said, "It's true of every president. You don't get to decide what issues you're gonna deal with, what's gonna be on your plate today. You know, some of it you get to decide, but some of it is just incoming."

The clock was ticking. The longer the CIA worked to be certain they'd found bin Laden, the greater the chance they might spook him, losing the best chance they'd had in nine years.

Dickerson asked, "Were you conscious of the disconnect between what we see, and then what's really going on behind the scenes?"

"Absolutely," Wallace replied. "I mean, nobody had a clue. Remember, the night before the raid, Obama is at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And he's taking off after Donald Trump because Trump has been propagating the birther theory. And he starts making fun of the decisions that Trump made on 'Celebrity Apprentice':

Mr. Obama: "But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night."

"He's 24 hours from the biggest decision of his presidency," Wallace said. "And perhaps, it's either going to secure or eliminate the chances for his reelection."

It was the biggest decision for that president, but a typical presidential one: a choice where the chance for success was not much better than 50 percent, and even the best outcome was one where Americans were almost certain to die.

"I came to quite a different view of Obama through writing this book," Wallace said. "Did a lotta people think he was the candidate of hope and change and peace, and a dove? Yeah, but they didn't recognize how tough Obama was."

Admiral William McRaven, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, was also surprised, as Wallace recalled: "One of the things that McRaven said is, 'I know the guy had never been in the military. But he was so discerning about what was important and what wasn't, and he knew his strengths and he knew his limits. He knew the stuff he didn't know, and he wasn't gonna presume or pretend that, you know, I'm more of a general than the generals.'"

Dickerson asked, "Given that, what do you think when leaders say, 'Well, I just trust my gut'?"

"I think they're damn fools," Wallace replied.

"Do you ever think some of the people who are running, or want to run, you think, 'They couldn't have handled this kind of challenge' that Obama faced, or that any president faces, when it really gets to the toughest things?"

"Yes," he replied.

As a presidential debate moderator, Wallace has thought a lot about what it takes to be president: "There are a lot of things about the presidency other than making these kinds of life-and-death decisions. But for the biggest things, the things like bin Laden, the things like getting out of Afghanistan and confronting North Korea and all of these things, there are gonna be crises, completely unforeseen crises. And the idea of thinking, really thinking, 'Could they handle that? Could they handle all of the incoming, all of the information, all of the pressure, all of the risks, all of the possibilities, and come to the right conclusion?' In the end, it's kind of a guess; you don't know until they're there. But it's a useful way to look at a potential president."

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Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Remington Korper.

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"Countdown bin Laden": Obama's pursuit of the 9/11 mastermind - CBS News