In case you needed more evidence that President Joe Biden terribly botched every step of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley and the Pentagon are more than willing to provide you with some.
Hawley tweeted out an email shared with him by someone he says was an American official present in Afghanistan during the frantic evacuation of American citizens and lawful permanent residents. The email shows how little vetting occurred for those who were evacuated until they arrived on military bases after leaving Afghanistan.
More importantly, the email states that Biden gave a directive to acting U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson instructing that “total inflow to the U.S. must exceed the number of seats available. Err. On the side of excess.”
This would fit perfectly with the Biden administration’s talking points, which placed an unusual emphasis on the number of total people evacuated while ignoring how many Americans and Afghan allies were left behind to the mercy of the Taliban, as well as the fact that several evacuees were flagged for security risks.
Biden’s rush to cover himself in glory by padding the numbers of the evacuation was a clear response to the fact that his incompetence left hundreds of Americans behind. The White House tried to claim that there were around 100 Americans left in the country a week after the withdrawal.
But that number has gone up over the past few months, not down. The State Department told congressional staff last week that there were 363 Americans still stranded in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Now, the Pentagon has increased that number to 439. While Biden was having planes filled to the brim with literally anyone they could find in order to salvage some sort of victory from his terribly executed withdrawal, he somehow couldn’t ensure that those 439 Americans were able to come home.
As bad as it looked at the time, Biden’s withdrawal somehow manages to keep looking worse with each passing day. Maybe that explains how quickly Biden and his team tried to move on from it.
