Remember when the Biden administration claimed there were 100-200 American citizens left behind in Afghanistan? We were also assured that the Biden administration was working aggressively to get them all out. It was a huge lie, and as the weeks passed, the number of American citizens the Biden administration acknowledged are trapped in the Taliban-controlled country kept going up, not down?
Earlier this month, the Pentagon admitted that immediate family members of U.S. service members are among those Americans left behind in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. According to a memo obtained by NBC News, these family members had been given instructions on how to get help from the Defense Department.
If you thought that meant getting these people out of the country was a priority for the Biden administration, you were wrong. It’s been two weeks since the memo went out, and the Biden administration is letting red tape get in the way.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby revealed on Monday that “about 60 service members have come forward and expressed concerns about family members in Afghanistan.”
Unfortunately, the Biden administration doesn’t seem interested in helping them. According to Kirby, “Thus far of the ones that have been studied and reviewed, they are not eligible for parole status.”
Kirby later dodged a question about why these family members aren’t eligible.
“I refer you to State for the details,” Kirby said. “What I can tell you is they were all evaluated and thus far in the evaluation, none have been determined to be eligible for parole status. I’d refer you to my State Department colleagues.”
Excuse me? How is it possible that the Biden administration considers any family member of a U.S. service member to be ineligible for evacuation? How many thousands of Afghans were airlifted out of the country before them without being vetted? And now people who served in the United States military are being told their own family members are, at least for now, stuck in Afghanistan, with the Taliban in control.
Does that sound right to anyone?
For our VIPs: Don’t Trust the Biden Admin to Be Honest About the Number of Americans Still in Afghanistan
Kirby was also clueless regarding how many family members were affected, which is also hard to comprehend. Not only is the Biden administration letting red tape get in the way of these evacuations, but they still don’t have a clue as to how many citizens were left behind in the first place.
According to Military.com, veterans groups and members of Congress helped evacuate the families of 48 service members in the Army and Marine Corps who had 509 relatives stuck in Afghanistan last month. But, the true number of American citizens still there is unclear, and the Biden administration seems unwilling to be transparent about it. Despite claiming only 100 to 200 Americans had been left behind, according to a leaked State Department cable from the last week of August Americans represented less than 17% of the people who were evacuated, and one U.S. official told the Daily Caller that there would be an estimated 8,000 Americans left in Afghanistan by the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.
Not one American should have been left behind, nor should any family members of our troops have been. The disaster that Biden made of Afghanistan continues to get worse.
