As the Taliban continues to take over the government of Afghanistan, Virginia is willing to take in thousands of Afghan refugees, Gov. Ralph Northam announced on Twitter.
“Last week I was honored to meet some of the thousands of Afghan citizens and families who have sought refuge at Fort Lee in Virginia,” Northam tweeted. “I’m coordinating with [Washington] DC and have made it clear: we’re ready and willing to take thousands more. Virginia will continue to serve as [a] safe harbor.”
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The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has produced moving scenes of disorder and desperation. Some see American fecklessness. Others, the rancid fruit of attempting to cultivate Afghanistan in our image. Finally, others see the Biden Administration making a hash of what was fundamentally a good policy of planned withdrawal. Even for those who supported withdrawal—as I did—the events of the last week undeniably were emblematic of the ongoing humiliation of the United States and its military.
Defending his decisions, Joe Biden gave a surprisingly good speech, which could have just as easily come from Donald Trump or Ron Paul. But considering the circumstances, the tone was off. The speech only justified the withdrawal in general and avoided taking responsibility for its particulars, including the grim scene at the Kabul airport, for which Biden and his administration bear some responsibility. Biden defied credulity when he said, “We planned for every contingency.”
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Joe Biden’s national security team reportedly ignored the Trump administration’s careful plans for withdrawing from Afghanistan, resulting in the nightmare scenario currently unfolding in the war-torn country.
Former National Security Council Senior Director Kash Patel told Just the News’ John Solomon on Thursday, “I don’t even know that anyone could have made this awful scenario up. It’s literally worse than you could possibly conjure.”
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The Biden administration continued to inform American citizens in Afghanistan as of Thursday evening they could have to pay more than $2,000 to board an evacuation flight out of the country, despite the State Department telling the press hours before that it had no intention of levying any such charges.
The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has stated in multiple security advisories since Monday that any U.S. citizen seeking to evacuate the country must complete an online form in order to secure their repatriation flight. “This form is the only way to communicate interest in flight options,” the embassy said in a security advisory Wednesday.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told the Daily Caller News Foundation and other news outlets late Thursday afternoon that the Biden administration has “no intention of seeking any reimbursement from those fleeing Afghanistan.”
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Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor and Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby dodged a reporter’s question about whether the US military is buying aviation fuel from the Taliban as evacuation efforts continue at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul.
During a briefing at the Pentagon Thursday, Kirby also revealed that of the 2,000 people evacuated over the last 24 hours, only 300 of them were Americans.
“How are you fueling your planes… are you now in a position that you have to buy fuel from the Taliban?” asked Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin during a briefing at the Pentagon.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp reportedly has invited Afghan refugees to resettle there, and his announcement has not carried over well with Peach State conservatives. Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones said on his social media pages this week that Kemp’s suggestion is reckless and threatens national security.
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Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, is best known as home to the Army’s tank division, the revered Old Ironsides military insignia and the country’s largest military-controlled airspace. But the Biden administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan is turning the vast installation into ground zero for the evacuation of Afghans who spent two decades helping the United States fight the war against terror.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn says the fort is preparing to receive 10,000 Afghan refugees, and military officials have hinted that number could reach much higher.
It’s the second major wave of civilian guests to be hosted at the fort, which began this spring helping the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Departments to house thousands of unaccompanied minor children who were brought across the border.
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“Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31st. The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart… And thanks to the way in which we have managed our withdrawal, no one — no one U.S. forces or any forces have — have been lost. Conducting our drawdown differently would have certainly come with a increased risk of safety to our personnel.”
That was President Joe Biden as recently as July 8 justifying not just a drawdown, but a rapid drawdown of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, trying to reach an arbitrary goal of zero troops in the country by the end of this month.
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White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that “certainly a fair amount” of U.S. weaponry that was in the possession of Afghan Security Forces has now fallen in the hands of the Taliban.
Sullivan spoke at a White House press briefing two days after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and was asked whether the Biden administration knows where the billions of dollars in weaponry that the U.S. supplied the Afghan government will ultimately end up.
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One of the five Taliban commanders who was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 by former president Barack Obama in exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, is emerging as a key figure who helped the insurgents seize power in Afghanistan.
Khairullah Khairkhwa, along with the other freed detainees, used Qatar as a base to form a Taliban regime in exile, and eventually became an official negotiator for peace talks with the Biden regime, the New York Post reported.
Khairkhwa previously served as Spokesperson of the Taliban regime, Governor of the Kabul Province of the Taliban regime, and Minister of Internal Affairs of the Taliban regime, according to the United Nations National Security Council.
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On Tuesday, Twitter admitted in a statement that they have no plans to ban the official accounts of the Taliban and its spokesmen, even after the radical Islamist group had seized control of the nation of Afghanistan over the weekend, as reported by the New York Post.
When asked about maintaining such accounts, the statement released by Twitter mostly dodged the issue and deferred to basic platitudes about how the social media giant would “continue to proactively enforce” its rules, and would only ban tweets that include “glorification of violence, platform manipulation, and spam.”
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President Joe Biden is facing bipartisan backlash over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan ahead of the 2022 midterm elections as lawmakers from both parties call for an investigation into his administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal.
Democrats vowed “tough questions” Tuesday as they used words like “flawed,” “failures” and “horrifying” to describe the administration’s exit strategy and the scenes unfolding in Kabul.
The president, for his part, is not changing course and vows to complete a full withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. But he now faces the specter of his own party investigating his team’s conduct and competence in the shadows of a 2022 election where control of Congress is up for grabs.
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In a hastily called news conference Monday afternoon President Joe Biden and his advisors tried to control the damage of this past weekend. But it may be too late. Biden not only lost Afghanistan, he lost credibility, and with that, the American people.
A defiant Biden said he did not regret his decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, while acknowledging that the country’s collapse to the Taliban came much sooner than U.S. officials had anticipated.
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A Democratic senator compared the scene in Kabul as the U.S. rushed to evacuate embassy personnel and Afghan allies to the fall of Saigon in 1975 on Monday.
“Sad. My father was our next-to-last ambassador in Saigon, and our ambassador when ‘peace deal’ was negotiated in Laos,” tweeted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. “How that all ended deserved more attention.”
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President Biden acknowledged Monday the collapse of Afghanistan occurred “more quickly” than his administration anticipated.
“Truth is, this unfolded more quickly than we anticipated,” Biden said in a national TV address to Americans from the White House.
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Three members of Congress who represent Georgia and Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives said Monday that U.S. President Joe Biden must resign from office. This, after Biden decided to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
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The Founder of the Blackwater private security firm and the author of a comprehensive plan to save Afghanistan by shifting the country’s security to private contractors and away from the American military told the Star News Network he warned U.S. diplomats the government of President Ashraf Ghani would fall before Labor Day.
“I told a number of ambassadors in the region there; they should expect a collapse of Kabul by Labor Day, and I said that back in April, based on when the U.S. air pressure, when the Air Force really stopped bombing, when that threat largely disappears, then the Taliban would be able to group and mass as they have done, and then they start blowing up cities,” said Erik Prince, the Navy SEAL veteran and national security entrepreneur.
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As Afghanistan descends into chaos, the Taliban announced on Sunday that they soon will declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The country went by that name under the previous Taiban regime.
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Over 200 Afghan allies arrived at Fort Lee, in Virginia, on the first of many expected flights bringing thousands of people who assisted the U.S. military to America, Axios reported Friday.
President Joe Biden promised to help Afghan interpreters and other people who aided U.S. forces during the war, according to Axios. Over 700 people and their family members are expected to come to the U.S. on special immigrant visas as American forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
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With each passing day in Afghanistan the Taliban grows stronger, and the pro-American government forces grow weaker. Anecdotally, you can see the momentum building in the news coverage.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, which has been tracking war in Afghanistan for years, estimates that as of Sunday the Taliban controlled 213 districts. It reports that the government controls 70 districts, and some 115 districts are being contested. Thus, after the United States, NATO, and our Afghan allies spent 20 years fighting to create a post-Taliban country, the evidence is growing that we have lost.
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After Joe Biden further delayed efforts to withdraw all American military forces from the nation of Afghanistan earlier this year, new reports suggest that the withdrawal will be delayed indefinitely and could leave up to 1,000 troops in the country, according to CNN.
The report comes from an anonymous administration official, who claimed that the residual forces would stay behind to ostensibly secure the U.S. embassy and the airport in the capital city of Kabul. However, another anonymous official with the Department of Defense claimed that the residual forces left behind would not exceed 650.
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Casualties from a Monday shooting at Kabul University in Afghanistan have risen to 35, according to two government officials, Reuters reported.
The majority of the dead were students, and approximately 50 were wounded in the attack, the sources said, Reuters reported. The Taliban has denied responsibility for the attack, but approximately 100 students protested outside the school that Doha Taliban peace negotiations haven’t resulted in lowered violence.
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Afghanistan on Sunday claimed to have killed a top al-Qaida terror leader and propagandist who is on the FBI’s most wanted list.
Husam Abd al-Rauf, who was wanted by the FBI for providing support to terrorist organizations and conspiring to kill U.S. nationals, was reportedly killed in firefight in a Taliban-controlled area, according to the Associated Press. A total of six other suspected Islamic militants were dispatched in the raid and one Afghan authority was killed, the AP reported.
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