Biden’s Shameful Betrayal of America’s Closest Allies in Afghanistan

P resident Biden withdrew all U.S. forces from Afghanistan on August 30 despite the fact that at least 100 to 200 U.S. citizens remained stuck in the Taliban-controlled territory.

Thousands more legal permanent U.S. residents were left behind.

As for the Afghans who were America’s closest allies in the war — and thus face the greatest risk of being slaughtered by the Taliban? It’s hard to pin down an exact figure, but the New York Times estimates that the United States left behind “at least 100,000 Afghans eligible for resettlement in the United States for their work with the Americans.”

A State Department official acknowledged on Wednesday that a “majority” of Afghans who qualified for Special Immigrant Visas by working as translators and in intelligence for U.S. forces were left in Afghanistan, and NBC News reports that it was in fact an overwhelming majority:

“More than 120,000 people of all nationalities were evacuated from the Kabul airport as the U.S. military withdrew, but initial figures suggest that only about 8,500 of those who left Afghanistan in recent months were Afghans, according to numbers released by the Biden administration and estimates from advocates. . . .

As the U.S. military mission drew to a close over the past month and the Taliban rolled into Kabul, the Biden administration said the evacuation effort would place a priority on flying out American citizens and Afghan “partners” who applied for what are known as Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs).

More in Afghanistan

• The Biden Administration’s Complete Failure in Afghanistan

• Who’s Paying to Keep the Taliban in Business? You Are

• Is Afghanistan the Next Gaza?

As of May, about 18,000 to 20,000 Afghans who worked with U.S. troops and diplomats had applied for SIVs, according to government figures. When their family members are included, the pool of Afghans in the SIV program was at least 70,000 and probably higher, according to refugee advocacy groups.

It’s hard to overstate the depth of this betrayal.

When the U.S. military recruited Afghans to assist U.S. forces, “part of that pitch when asking Afghans to trust us and put their lives on the line for us was that if this day ever came, we would do right by them and bring them out,” Congressman Peter Meijer of Michigan, a veteran of the Iraq War, told National Review in a recent interview. “That was part of that promise — that we will not leave you behind. That was implicit in the legislation [establishing Special Immigrant Visas for Afghan allies], and that was conveyed by [U.S. military] folks on the ground to those who chose to work with us.”

Blame for this betrayal rests squarely on the shoulders of the current commander in chief. President Biden can complain as much as he wants about Trump’s deal with the Taliban — it was very bad indeed — but Biden has been president since January 20, 2021. He delayed Trump’s May 1 withdrawal date until September 11 (before moving it up to August 31). If Biden needed more time to execute a plan that would have rescued our closest allies, he could have set the withdrawal date back a few more months once the fighting season had ended.

Biden can’t say he wasn’t warned. Members of Congress and veterans of the war desperate to rescue translators and their families have been warning the Biden administration since the spring that urgent action was necessary to save those allies who would be trapped behind enemy lines.

Biden simply didn’t have a plan to evacuate allies in the event of an entirely predictable — and, in fact, predicted — crisis:

It wasn’t xenophobia of the American people that caused Biden to betray Afghan allies. The overwhelming majority of Congress and the overwhelming majority of the American people wanted these allies to be brought to the United States. A YouGov poll, for example, asked Americans what the United States “should do for Afghans who worked for U.S. troops and officials in recent years, in intelligence or as translators, and who now might face punishment from the Taliban.” The poll found that 81 percent of Americans said we should “help those Afghans come to the U.S.” Trump voters were as supportive as the general population — 79 percent of them said the U.S. should help those Afghan allies come to the United States.

It wasn’t a handful of right-wing commentators and politicians who stoked fears about bringing Afghan translators into America that caused most of those allies to be left behind. But, as the small number of SIV applicants who made it to America settle into their new homes, it’s worth addressing two main arguments against welcoming them.

Some on the right have claimed the United States was trying to establish an “open borders” policy with Afghanistan. That’s obviously, wildly wrong. The United States legally admits 1 million immigrants every year, so even if all SIVs and their family members had been evacuated, that would have been a small fraction of our yearly immigrant intake.

The other concern is that some interpreters might present a security threat. One Republican Senate candidate and veteran of the Afghanistan War warned viewers on Tucker Carlson’s program that a translator who had worked with his platoon aided an attack on U.S. troops. But that is one anecdote, and Congressman Peter Meijer points out it would be strange if anyone who had loyally served the U.S. for years would be a threat now. “Especially in the case of the interpreters — if they had malice toward the U.S., I’m pretty sure there were plenty of times to have done something negative before risking their lives on multiple occasions. It’s a pretty absurd premise,” Meijer told National Review. “We have their biometrics. They’re entered into databases. These folks have been pretty rigorously screened,” Meijer added. “These are not random people. Many of these folks who worked with the U.S. for years, some for decades. The majority speak fluent English. They believed in this country enough to risk their lives to help its mission in Afghanistan.”

You can rightly criticize the rhetoric of some right-wing cable-news hosts and a handful of Republican politicians who stoked fears about Afghan interpreters all you want. But they are not responsible for this obscene betrayal of America’s allies — President Biden is.