Joe Biden and the Democrats continue to pursue their America Last agenda, this time by ignoring the sacrosanct principle of the United States to never abandon American citizens in a country collapsing due to war or civil strife. Like so many other standards and values, the Biden administration has thrown rescue of Americans in war torn countries into the “too hard” category.
The latest catastrophe facing our nation is unfolding in Sudan, where a brutal fight for power between two government factions erupted mid-April with the potential of slipping into a full-fledged civil war. At this writing, over 500 people have been killed, including two Americans, with thousands injured. A week after the fighting erupted the US State Department announced that the American Embassy in Khartoum was closing and that dozens of American diplomatic personnel were successfully evacuated. But lo and behold, the 16,000 Americans in Sudan were told they were on their own.
In what struck most observers as a ghoulish and shocking replay of the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration was fleeing a nation with no plan to rescue or evacuate Americans in harm’s way. Embassy personnel were quickly and safety evacuated by elite SEAL commandoes using Chinook helicopters, but those not lucky enough to be employed by the government were told it was too dangerous to evacuate them, that the airport was damaged and unusable, and they should “shelter in place.”
CNN reported on the disbelief and anger felt by abandoned Americans: “Those who spoke to CNN said they and their family members have had to make ‘life or death decisions’ about when and how to leave the country with very little guidance. ‘We expected the [State] Department to provide some kind of guidance, but the guidance was the template, just shelter in place, no critical information being provided…It seems like American citizens in this situation just have to fend for themselves and hope for the best. Apparently, we are just ‘passport holders,’ whose lives and well-being is not a priority for the US government.’”
While an embarrassing level of experience, one would think the Biden administration would act on their familiarity with what needs to be done when fleeing a country. But no. Now, with the closure of our embassy in Khartoum, Biden has lost four embassies in his brief tenure as president. He and his dazed and confused cabinet and staff have learned nothing after abandoning our embassies in Afghanistan, Belarus, Ukraine, and now Sudan. While we eventually reopened our Ukraine embassy after first running away like scared rabbits, the message sent around the world over and over was that the United States of America not only has lost control of its presence in multiple countries but had no plan or was unable to execute plans to maintain our presence and to assist our own people facing existential threats.
The State Department was very specific about why we couldn’t manage to fly Americans out by insisting that “due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens.”
Strangely, multiple other countries were rapidly flying their own citizens, and many others, out of the war zone. Fox News reported, “While the U.S. says it’s too dangerous to get its citizens out, other countries are proceeding with evacuations of their nationals including France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Holland, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Jordan, South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”
Moreover, “Germany’s defense ministry said Tuesday that it conducted evacuation flights resulting in getting more than 700 people out of Sudan including 200 Germans and hundreds more from more than 20 other countries. France evacuated more than 500 people from 41 different countries… The United Kingdom is using its military to evacuate civilians from an airport outside Khartoum. Saudi Arabia evacuated about 2,150 people by ship from Sudan, including 114 Saudi citizens and more than 2,000 evacuees from 62 other nations, according to a state-run news service,” reported Fox News.
It’s remarkable that countries ranging from South Africa to Holland to South Korea found a way to directly evacuate their citizens in an efficient and rapid way, but the US under the perpetual feckless and dangerously incompetent Biden has limited Americans to phone and virtual online help. Why is it the Biden administration is unable (or refuses?) to govern as though they care about the fate of the American people?
After weeks of telling 16,000 Americans in Sudan to hide in their homes caused significant backlash, NPR now reports that a “group of mostly Americans — along with some Germans, Norwegians and local staff — were driven on seven buses contracted by the U.S. and monitored by armed drones on the journey… The U.S. government contracted 16 buses total.”
The latest report is that 1000 Americans have been “evacuated” using this process, but exactly where they are now has not been confirmed. Much like Afghanistan, Americans remain in harm’s way, and details we can trust are hard to come by.
Port Sudan is a “place of relative safety” but as NPR notes “American ships are just off Port Sudan, but not in the port itself. The official said there are no State Department or U.S. military personnel at the Port.”
Every step of the way the Biden administration displays the same careless, incompetent, and passive response we saw during the Afghanistan debacle. Nothing has changed as the most basic responsibility of our federal government– keeping Americans safe—is still mission impossible for Biden and his gang of fools. One fiasco can be considered an unfortunate accident, but for the Biden administration leaving Americans behind abroad and destroying our quality of life, economy, and security here at home is no accident—it’s policy.