George Packer at The Atlantic in remarking on how “Veterans, with their code of leaving no one behind on the battlefield, have been among the most passionate advocates for Afghan interpreters,” tells the heart-wrenching story of the fate of interpreters who worked with the U.S. and were trapped in Afghanistan and how the “chaos produced by the Biden administration’s delays has given an outsize role to sheer randomness, as twists of fate save one Afghan and doom another.”
Writes Packer:
“[O]ur abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, staked their lives on us, is a final, gratuitous shame that we could have avoided. The Biden administration failed to heed the warnings on Afghanistan, failed to act with urgency—and its failure has left tens of thousands of Afghans to a terrible fate. This betrayal will live in infamy.”
[…]
“Today, the U.S. government is more focused on saving our own than on saving the Afghans who counted on us. For many of them, time is running out. For some, it already has.”
“All of this was foreseeable—all of it was foreseen. For months, members of Congress and advocates in refugee, veteran, and human-rights organizations have been urging the Biden administration to evacuate America’s Afghan allies on an emergency basis. For months, dire warnings have appeared in the press. The administration’s answers were never adequate: We’re waiting for Congress to streamline the application process. Half the interpreters we’ve given visas don’t want to leave. We don’t want to panic the Afghan people and cause the government in Kabul to collapse. Evacuation to a U.S. territory like Guam could lead to legal problems, so we’re looking for third-country hosts in the region. Most of the interpreters are in Kabul, and Kabul won’t fall for at least six months.”
Read the rest of Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy.