Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Nation must repay loyalty in kind as U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan

Ball

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

Army Capt. Matthew Ball, right, hugs his former interpreter Qismat Amin, as Amin arrives from Afghanistan, at San Francisco International Airport Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017, in San Francisco. Ball welcomed Amin to the United States after buying him a plane ticket to ensure he would get in quickly amid concerns the Trump administration may expand its travel ban to Afghanistan.

In withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, the Biden administration was morally obligated to protect the thousands of Afghan nationals who aided the U.S. war effort.

But as revealed last week by Politico, the administration failed to develop a plan to evacuate those courageous individuals before the withdrawal was announced in April, leaving them and their families vulnerable to being tortured and killed by the Taliban.

This is disgraceful, as these nationals served in an array of critical roles that included interpreter and translator.

Our failure to offer them immediate protection is dangerous to our national interests going forward. If people who volunteer to protect American forces don’t feel our country will fulfill its duty to care for them in return, this will have dire consequences in U.S. security efforts.

As Politico reported, the situation came to light during a classified briefing with top-ranking security officials shortly after the April announcement of the withdrawal. When a lawmaker asked about the plan to evacuate the Afghan nationals and expedite their visas, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had no answer and instead said, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

That was shocking, and worse yet the administration didn’t form a task force on the issue until July 19.

That was grossly late in the process, considering that the Taliban had made significant military gains since the withdrawal began in late April. Although the administration finally ordered evacuation flights to begin in late July for about 700 applicants and their families, several thousand remain behind. This includes individuals living in areas controlled by the Taliban — a particularly chilling thought.

“It’s my view that the evacuations should have started right after the announcement of our withdrawal. That evacuation started too late,” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, told Politico in an interview. “But it started. And I appreciate the fact that it’s going, and that they’re doing it aggressively now.”

Agreed on both counts, but our bungled efforts might cost lives.

Biden positions himself as an effective, experienced and compassionate manager of government, and in several cases he’s backed up that image during his time in the Oval Office. But in this case, he and his team utterly failed. It’s unconscionable that the Afghan nationals weren’t treated as a critical priority in planning for the withdrawal. And while there’s finally some movement, the administration’s handling of the situation has echoes of the chaotic evacuation of Saigon in 1975.

Let’s not forget that when former President Barack Obama dialed down the U.S. military presence in Iraq, he took into account the need to provide Iraqi translators who had aided our forces with visas. Several thousand were brought to the U.S. before the Trump administration essentially halted the program, resulting in only a handful of translators being granted visas in 2018.

Given Biden’s experience in the Obama administration and his decades in Congress, he should have been acutely aware of the need for evacuations to be a high-priority element of the withdrawal strategy. For a president who routinely ends his speeches by saying “May God bless America and may God protect our troops,” it’s galling for him to show disregard for the people of a foreign land who are very actively protecting our troops.

America is far better than this. We as a people expect our leaders to treat those who protect our troops as the heroes they are — not as an afterthought.