Nothing says ‘we don’t care’ like your own government downplaying your dangerous circumstances. That’s just what happened Tuesday when Pentagon spokesman John Kirby shrugged off concerns about the US citizens and the billions of dollars in military technology left in Afghanistan.
Last week, the State Department estimated that there were around 1,500 Americans who had contacted the Biden administration to arrange extraction and were still in Afghanistan waiting to be evacuated. On Sunday, Kirby himself admitted that there were “roughly” 300 Americans still behind enemy lines awaiting a trip out of Afghanistan.
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie admitted Monday that there were several hundred Americans still stranded:
“We did not get out everybody we had wanted to get out,” McKenzie admitted Monday, adding that diplomatic measures will likely be needed to extract Americans left behind.
“It’s not completely unlike the way we do it elsewhere around the world,” Kirby said when asked how the Biden Administration plans to extract its own citizens from Afghanistan. “We have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time, and we do everything we can to try to facilitate safe passage.”
The general is conveniently not saying that those Americans aren’t stranded in hostile, terrorist ran regions surrounded by militants.
Pentagon Spokesman, today: “We have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time”
Jen Psaki, August 23: "I think it's irresponsible to say Americans are stranded. They are not." pic.twitter.com/syyDJT9P6N
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 31, 2021
Another broken promise…
Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, excoriated Mr. Biden’s remarks on Tuesday as a show of “callous indifference to the Americans he abandoned behind enemy lines.”
“He promised the American people that our troops would stay until every American was out,” Mr. Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.
According to the New York Times, relief groups in the United States that helped American citizens and Afghans who worked with the U.S. government described a heartbreaking and dizzying process in which people trying to escape were routed, then rerouted, to pick up points across Kabul where they were to board buses or join caravans headed to the airport, but were blocked along the way.
Some people reported that Taliban fighters at checkpoints took their American passports, the relief workers said. Others said they were harassed or beaten as they made their way to meeting points, and were unwilling to again put themselves and their families in harm’s way.
