Allies Left Behind
President Biden has admitted, without a word of apology, that the United States has broken its word and left behind tens of thousands of Afghans who worked and fought alongside us. The allies America abandoned face utter horror, as Biden’s botched withdrawal has put the ruthless Taliban in possession of vast troves of military weaponry — and data identifying who helped us over the 20-year war.
At least 300,000 Afghans face Taliban backlash for associating with Americans these last two decades, experts estimate. And the terrorists have already begun taking revenge.
Americans overwhelmingly supported extending the deadline to ensure we left no one behind, found an ABC News/Ipsos poll taken after last week’s deadly bombing. But Biden stubbornly refused to budge on a Aug. 31 exit even as rising chaos made it impossible to get out everyone promised a safe haven and US officials gave up on evacuating them long before the bitter end.
An Afghan who’d worked as a translator for US forces told a reporter he tried to reach the Kabul airport late Friday with a group who’d received permission to go. At the fourth checkpoint, the Taliban told them the Americans instructed them to pass only US passport-holders. “I am so hopeless for my future,” the man lamented. “If the evacuation is over, what will happen to us?”
Hiding looks impossible: Taliban troops arriving in Kabul rushed to Afghan government offices to grab files that identified, among other things, intelligence officers and informers. More info came thanks to Uncle Sam, abandoned in the middle-of-the-night scramble out of Bagram air base: biometric devices and data that can identify our Afghan allies via iris scans and fingerprints.
The State Department released a statement Sunday vowing to hold the Taliban to their promise to let people leave Afghanistan after the US bugout. But what leverage does America have? Not one person who aided America should have been left in the country after we withdrew. When the inevitable happens, Biden will have more blood on his hands.