Shortly after the State Department told reporters a “majority” of Afghan partners were left behind as the United States withdrew, the White House highlighted a different figure.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said at Wednesday’s White House briefing that 77% of the people evacuated were “Afghans at risk” following the Taliban takeover of the country.
“Are there more people who want to leave Afghanistan?” she asked. “Absolutely.”
BIDEN AND TRUMP BATTLE OVER WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN IN AFGHANISTAN
President Joe Biden and his subordinates have emphasized the success of the airlifts in terms of the absolute number of people who were evacuated from Afghanistan ahead of the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.
But State Department officials earlier Wednesday described being “haunted” by the “painful trade-offs and choices” that had to be made in terms of who would leave and who would remain behind.
“Those crowds that were outside the access points were on the verge of flipping to a mob at any given moment of any given day,” a senior official said at a State Department briefing. “And the more that we and other nations went out and tried to pull individuals out of that undifferentiated crowd and bring them in, the closer to mob violence we came, every time.”
The two numbers are not in conflict, but measure different things.
Psaki also referred questions about Americans remaining in Afghanistan, estimated to be somewhere between 100 and 200, to the State Department. “They have a briefing today,” she said.
On Tuesday, the White House released an updated transcript of Biden’s remarks on Afghanistan, correcting his statement that 90% of U.S. citizens who wanted to leave the country got out to an updated, higher figure: 98%.
Lawmakers and commentators have criticized the White House for leaving some Americans and a larger number of Afghan allies in the nearly 20-year war efforts behind after a messier than expected withdrawal. “Our national security team, and no one in Congress, and I would say most people in the public, did not anticipate that the Taliban would be able to take over as quickly as they did,” Psaki told reporters again on Wednesday.
The White House is facing pressure from both sides of the refugee question. Many are clamoring for more Afghan allies to be assisted in their departure from the now Taliban-run country, while others are concerned about the U.S. admitting a large number of refugees from a country with a history of terrorist activity.
“I can absolutely assure you that no one is coming into the United States of America has not been through a thorough screening and background check process,” Psaki said.
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A Pew Research Center poll of U.S. adults found continued majority support for withdrawing from Afghanistan and a broad consensus that the war had failed to achieve its objectives.
But Biden received low marks for his execution of the withdrawal, with only 6% rating his performance as “excellent” and another 21% “good.” The withdrawal coincided with a larger drop in his presidential approval ratings, putting him underwater in the RealClearPolitics polling average for the first time since he has been in office.
