When he heard that both the Palace and the Ministry of State separately declared that around “a ‘thousand’ Americans may not want to leave” Afghanistan, Rubio came unglued. That’s “a lie!” Americans are being thrown to the wolves in the name of expedience and Blinken thinks you’ll believe they’re volunteers.
State of confusion
Antony Blinken and the Department let the confusion slip, through a series of back and forth messages. They claim “hundreds of Americans are still in Afghanistan waiting to be evacuated.”
Nobody is sure how many but “both the State Department and the White House noted” that somewhere around a thousand might not want to go at all. It’s a sketchy claim at best. Conservative Florida Senator Marco Rubio called them out on it. He rapidly fired back that’s “a lie!”
The State Department “admits 4,100 Americans remaining in Kabul alone but claim that some of them are deciding not to leave,” Rubio tapped out on Twitter.
“This is a lie Taliban isn’t allowing American women through their checkpoints without a male guardian & are blocking non-citizen family members of U.S. citizens.” The scandal goes deeper than that.
If you don’t answer your phone when you get the call, they assume you don’t want a lift home. “Of those 1,500, 500 have been contacted and want to leave. The remaining thousand, though, have not responded to the State Department’s repeated queries.”
They can’t keep dialing until their fingers fall off, can they? Officials complain. The department “has sent more than 20,000 emails and made over 40,000 phone calls to Americans advising them how to leave the country if they wished and providing other resources,” Blinken blinked.
Making a list
Antony Blinken refuses to admit this is Saigon all over again. “What we’re doing is very carefully tabulating everything we have, cross-checking it, referencing it, using different databases.” That gives ISIS-K the time they need to drag troublemakers off to torture and slavery. “We will have numbers for all those different categories in the days ahead and after this initial phase of efforts to bring people out of Afghanistan ends.”
Those thousand people will be dead or worse by then but it’s not the fault of the State Department. “The Taliban have made public and private commitments to provide and permit safe passage for Americans and Afghans at risk going forward, past August 31,” he suggests. ISIS-K, however, is firm on that day being a deadline drawn in blood.
Another thing Rubio pointed out is that “it’s not immediately clear individuals stranded in Afghanistan — particularly those unable to make it through Taliban checkpoints — have reliable access to phones and email.”
Pundits within the beltway have been kicking around the idea that “the Biden Administration’s language, indicating that those left behind have selected their fate, is setting the stage for the Administration to wash their hands of Americans trapped in Afghanistan.” After the troop pull-out it’s everyone for themselves. The State Department is well aware of that.
Official Palace Propaganda Minister Jen Psaki confirmed that the blame is entirely with the “Americans who have not been in contact with Biden administration officials.” She told reporters all they need to do is reach out to the State Department for a ticket. There “may be individuals who have not yet contacted us.”
A journalist for Radio Free Europe explains they may be having just a touch of trouble checking in. “Taliban has now blocked all roads leading to #Kabul airport. Taliban fighters acting ‘extremely aggressive,’ locals say. No Afghans allowed through, unless accompanied by foreigners. Taliban refused to let a friend, a dual Afghan-Australian citizen, from entering airport today.”
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