Generals accused of going along with leaving allies behind in Afghanistan

 Jennifer van Laar:

As we watched Afghanistan fall to the Taliban in mid-August, and through the time we surrendered on August 30, we were astonished at the ineptitude displayed by the Biden administration in every facet of the operation, but we weren’t astonished that we were being lied to. We all knew when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki continually insisted that every American who wanted to get out of Afghanistan had been evacuated that she wasn’t telling the truth. We knew that the administration’s promise to get those Afghans who worked with us during 20 years of war out of the country was worth nothing. We just didn’t know how bad the truth was.

Now the truth is starting to come to light, and it shows that it wasn’t just Biden who had a lackadaisical attitude about leaving Americans and trusted Afghan allies – to whom we’d made sacred promises – behind. Even some of our top military commanders, including Gen. Milley, Gen. McKenzie, and Gen. Donahue, were okay with turning people away at the gate and essentially leaving them behind on the runway.

In one specific instance we reported a few weeks ago, at least 50 people, including Americans and Afghan personnel, were left behind at the airport in Kabul during the last hours of the Afghanistan withdrawal so Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue could load a Taliban Toyota Hilux with a rear-mounted Russian anti-aircraft cannon onto the airplane as a war trophy.

Donahue claims that the Hilux is not a war trophy and that no “personnel” were left behind in order to accommodate it, but the claim doesn’t hold water.

One of the people left behind in Kabul was “Mohammed,” a translator who was working with the 82nd Airborne in 2008 when he helped rescue Biden, John Kerry, and Chuck Hagel after their helicopter made an emergency landing in the mountains near Bagram Air Field during a snowstorm. Mohammed, who’d stood guard for 30 hours during that snowstorm to ensure Biden’s safety, wasn’t able to get his family through the gates at Hamid Karzai International Airport in those last harried days of the United States’ withdrawal. On the very last day, likely at the same time that Donahue was having that Taliban hunk of junk loaded onto a C-17, Mohammed sent a message to Biden via the Wall Street Journal:

“Hello, Mr. President: Save me and my family. Don’t forget me here.”

Forget, he did. Through his press secretary, he gave lip service to Mohammed, sending another hollow promise that he’d definitely get him out. But, no thanks to Biden, McKenzie, Milley, or Donahue, Mohammed and his family were finally able to escape Afghanistan and arrived in the United States last week.

Fortunately, Politico is now reporting that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has ordered multiple investigations into his department’s operations during the Afghanistan withdrawal, noting “the elevated interest in this work by Congress.” Among the areas to be reviewed:

[T]he State Department’s Special Immigrant Visa program; Afghans processed for refugee admission into the U.S.; resettlement of those refugees and visa recipients; and the emergency evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul “to include evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghan nationals.”

The Department of Defense has launched its own internal investigations into similar areas. According to multiple military, diplomatic, and intelligence community sources who spoke to RedState on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, there’s a bit of a blame game going on between the State Department and the Department of Defense over who botched the withdrawal, so the outcome of those investigations – and any potential congressional hearings – will be interesting.

Regardless, military veterans and even some active-duty soldiers who were on the ground in Afghanistan (but who cannot speak lest they be Schellered) are extremely upset that we left Americans and people like Mohammed, who put their lives on the line to help our soldiers accomplish the mission and keep them safe, behind. One veteran who served in the first Gulf War and in Afghanistan, and who participated in that 2008 rescue with Mohammed spoke exclusively to RedState about the withdrawal, about that “rescue” in February 2008, and about Mohammed, who we now know as Aman Khalili. Though his experiences were more than a decade ago, he was still emotional as he shared them with me. It’s important to hear these stories of individuals translators, knowing that there are thousands of men like him who believed in what America stood for and were willing, just like the men and women of our Armed Forces, to die for it.
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There is much more.

These investigations are sorely needed to gather the facts about one of the biggest debacles in history on the part of the State Department and the military, not to mention Joe Biden.  While state and Defense may be blaming each other, they share responsiblity in the minds of many.