The Biden admin was prepared to leave our Afghan allies behind
The administration’s utter failure to plan for the inevitable Afghanistan evacuation meant that it had barely enough resources to focus on getting (some) US citizens out of the country. If the government was the only actor calling the shots — normally standard procedure in war zones, to say the least — then the tens of thousands of Afghan allies who had risked their lives based on years-long US promises of loyalty would be on their own. Colonel Seth Krummrich, a twenty-two-year Green Beret who served as the chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) during the withdrawal, told us that US special forces had had just enough capacity to rescue Americans stranded across the country, but evacuating SIV applicants was simply beyond their bandwidth.
