Afghanistan horrors continue – all on Biden. Credible reports from inside State’s quiet halls and from veteran organizations indicate at least 1,000 Americans, not 100, remain trapped in Afghanistan. One estimate is closer is 2500, with permanent residents. Tens of thousands of Afghans tied to the US, and families, are hiding. Safe houses are raided, women formerly in government hunted down. These are Biden’s killing fields. Mr. Biden did this.
The media and Biden officials try to pivot from these Afghan horrors but cannot. The horrors continue. Americans and allies are trapped, hunted door to door. Biden’s State Department does nothing still, except – as one official said – “giving each other high fives for a big success.”
Stories come to me heartbreaking. Flights out of Mazar Sharif appear a dead letter, first held up by State, now by Taliban. State – which refuses to acknowledge this – had a cow when a plane showed up in a third country with Afghan asylum seekers, and all were not on the manifest.
Separately, stories are emerging – including one in Politico this weekend – the FBI is inquiring after veteran groups focused on Dunkirk-style rescues from third countries. The impression is, far from supporting those hoping to get Americans and allies out, the opposite may be afoot. See, e.g., Progressive foreign policy’s big week.
Individual stories are slow getting out but are making their way to congressional offices, people desperately seeking help from State’s Consular Affairs, coming up empty-handed. As each day counts, with tens of thousands of lives – each one dear – are in jeopardy, State is silent.
American allies are being dragged from homes, tortured, and killed as Taliban hunt teams seek and destroy – far from those fictional promises touted by Biden. Who seriously believed those promises? A kinder-gentler Taliban? With terrorist Haqqani as Interior Minister, Al Qaida woven into fabric, ISIS in the mix? The White House, Defense, and State knew the truth.
Now, hard reality hits – and it will keep hitting. These victims – abandoned by Biden’s national security team – will continue to die as a consequence of their acts. The specter is like watching bombs drop from 20,000 feet on helpless civilians, nowhere to go, no way out, trapped by Biden.
In recent days, a former Air Force officer – a nurse formerly stationed in Afghanistan who, on the side, taught Afghan children – shared her heartbreak. Close to four families, they are all now hunted, in hiding, desperate, fear the worst. She doggedly tries to get the State to respond. Nothing.
Others with knowledge of the failing evacuation process – to the extent any exists – say the White House and State want the story to go away, so ignore it. They say State ended direct support from Embassy Islamabad, Pakistan, a week ago – a vital exit ramp. Inquires get an email saying the former Pakistan-based task force no longer exists, inquiries forwarded to Main State.
They say forget the Afghan embassy to the US, as they are busy processing their own asylum claims. They say State keeps pretending the Taliban is a respectable government, even as reports mount of summary executions, torture, brutality toward anyone who helped, especially women.
And what about countless Americans still there – who Biden, Harris, Blinken, Sherman, Austin, Milley, Sullivan, Psaki, and others deny are there, yet know are there? How can truth be ignored?
Even now, good people from multiple Western countries are trying to save thousands of lives Biden-Harris and their inept, political, untruthful team condemned to death. Accountability?
Efforts are being made to have third countries assist, good people not giving up, thinking creatively about geography, logistics, asylum, legal routes, diplomatic leverage … all the while not quite believing we are in this horrifying, forgotten situation.
To abandon good and innocent people to death is repugnant, to abandon those who risked and sacrificed to save your life and to whom you swore fidelity is worse than repugnant. It is immoral, indefensible, unconscionable, and unforgivable.
So, to be clear – this is not over. The terror wrought internally, likely externally, by the Taliban, al-Qaida, ISIS, and other terrorist groups were given free rein in Afghanistan – with tens of billions of dollars in US equipment, communications, aviation, armaments – is only the beginning.
This faithless, feckless turn of events was precipitated by failed diplomacy, failed planning, lack of integrity, indifference to reality, abdication of responsibility, seeking to get an Afghan government to pretend greater strength than they had, ending air support and intelligence, unwillingness of anyone to stand up say – stop! It remains a disgrace.
The disgrace will only grow, and that is because – this is only beginning. Implications of this failure to foresee the foreseeable, to abandon people and progression toward rule of law – a plan that was working – is without precedent or moral justification.
Effects will now grow, as will the historic shame around this miscarriage of integrity, diplomacy, operations, and national security. This is an underreported, rolling tragedy – Biden’s killing fields. See also, Trapped in Kabul, Prominent Afghan Women Fear Retribution Under Taliban Rule.