What does America owe to the Afghan interpreters and others who assisted our military during our two-decade deployment? Lawmakers have argued for months that the very least we could do was offer shelter in the United States to those whose past assistance to us would endanger their lives under a Taliban regime.
But that was before the collapse of Afghanistan prompted professional partisan takesters to start ranting about letting foreigners into America.
“Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan?” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham said. “All day we heard phrases like ‘we promised them.’ Well, who did? Did you?”
It was a remarkably callous thing to say about people who spent years providing invaluable assistance to American military personnel—which perhaps explains why we’ve seen a more subtle version of the same argument cropping up.
According to this second argument, the problem isn’t that the U.S. would take in Afghan refugees. It is that the U.S. would take in Afghan refugees while American citizens still need to be evacuated too. After all, such was the speed and rapaciousness of the Taliban’s advance that thousands of U.S. citizens now find themselves stuck. Shouldn’t solving that problem be our top priority?
There was Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance: “I’d like to hear zero about Afghan refugees until we get every single American out first.”
And Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene arguing that t“Americans are not being allowed to leave, but Afghans are being taken to America” shows that President Joe Biden is “a complete failure to America.”
And here is former President Donald Trump reacting to a picture of a military plane full of Afghan refugees that took off from Kabul: “This plane should have been full of Americans. America First!”
It’s easy to see why some would find this argument useful. It isn’t an outright rejection of the notion that we should accept refugees—just a more defensible assertion that refugee processing should take a backseat to getting U.S. citizens out of harm’s way. And it shines a spotlight on the Biden administration’s deeply wishy-washy PR around the Afghan collapse. Asked whether Americans should be prioritized for evacuations, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded that “we are prioritizing a number of groups.”
But the argument is also a thorough misrepresentation of the facts on the ground. The depressing reality is that it means very little whose evacuation the U.S. is “prioritizing”—because the U.S. lacks the capacity to choose who exactly to get out of harm’s way.
This is the reality: The Kabul airport, which is held by U.S. forces, is one tiny island in a sea of Taliban-controlled territory. Although the Taliban reportedly agreed to allow safe passage for those in Kabul who wished to go to the airport, the State Department claimed that they have been violating that agreement. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said at a press conference that the Taliban “are blocking Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport.” There are no reports yet of the same being true for Americans, but the State Department has repeatedly cautioned citizens marooned in Kabul that they cannot guarantee their safe passage to the airport.
“I don’t think there has been any transparency from the Biden administration, or previously from the Trump administration, about any safe passage agreement,” said Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. and now works at the Hudson Institute. “So we don’t know what the agreement is. Now, will the Taliban shoot at Americans while they’re being evacuated? I don’t think so … the Taliban have wanted an American withdrawal from Afghanistan for a long time, and they will do everything to make sure that the Americans leave and do not come back.”
The White House may talk about prioritizing the evacuation of various groups, and its critics may complain about those priorities. But both groups ignore this fact: As things stand now, America isn’t getting to pick which Afghans and Americans will be flying out on our evac planes. That decision belongs to our jihadi adversaries.
