By Ray Cardello for December 27, 2021 Season 7 / Post 48

In August, we watched in horror, disgust, and embarrassment as the Biden plan to end the twenty-year American involvement in Afghanistan unfolded. From the premature withdrawal of our troops, allowing the Taliban to assume control, the abandonment of billions of dollars of military equipment, closing the only American-controlled airstrip, and leaving countless Americans behind, the plan was a failure on every page. Amazingly, the Biden team tied every failure back to Trump while spinning the debacle into the greatest airlift of Americans and allies of all time.

The ghastly scene of Afghans clinging to an American plane as it was taxiing to take off was emblematic of the disaster created by Biden and his staff. The airlift was a two-headed monster. On the one hand, we had planes full of unvetted and undocumented Afghans escaping the now Taliban-controlled country. On the other hand, we had Americans prevented from leaving and an administration that refused to assess the remaining Americans accurately. We are now four months out from the events of Kabul, and the results are still vague. The topic is rarely mentioned during press briefings, and the Defense and State Department are silent on updates. You have to dig deep to find news reports, but the ones you can uncover are disturbing.

Let’s stipulate that any facts we find need to be treated with cynicism. The administration manipulates the numbers to favor their narrative, as is the make-up of the refugees. We were told the Afghans were vetted before boarding, but we now know that to be false. We were told that these were people who had worked closely with Americans, but we now find that most have no English-speaking skills. Upwards of 80,000 refugees are relocated into every state except the District of Columbia. That exception is a classic NIMBY. The politicians making the decisions on relocation would never want a foreign group bogging down the resources they use.

The onus for finding homes for these people falls on religious and charitable groups. The government disperses then wipes their hands of them. These refugees have no say in their eventual home state and think of those lucky folks who go from the desert of Afghanistan to the tundra of Alaska. They have no money, job, home, cannot speak the language, and their children need to assimilate to new schools in unfamiliar locations. Welcome to America. Cities and towns also have little say in this process but need to accept the new burdens on already stretched resources.

We do not have any credible information about the remaining Americans in Afghanistan. This information void is frustrating and should madden every American. The numbers range from dozens to thousands. We took in 80,000 strangers before we assured every American was returned home safely. The priorities of the Biden administration are as disjointed as their poorly planned evacuation of Afghanistan. Fortunately for Joe Biden, he has a complicit mainstream media that will allow him to skate on this debacle. There is no adjective strong enough to characterize the operation, but we are getting used to this level of performance with Biden. He has found every way possible to lower the bar, yet they still find a way to go lower.

This article was first published on The Liberty Loft thelibertyloft.com