“Afghanistan is on my mind. All those executed overnight, tortured now, girls raped as concubines/sex slaves called “marriage”, our friends/allies with children in hiding who’ve run out of food/money/hope…so many wondering if they’ll see the men/boys taken from their homes again…The Biden administration has said very little about the efforts to extract Americans and Afghan allies from Afghanistan, after President Joe Biden’s self-imposed timeline caused a hasty withdrawal, stranding perhaps thousands of individuals behind enemy lines. Our “leaders” responsible likely slept well w/out a thought for the evil they’ve done. But so many Americans woke like me with a sick feeling of dread in my heart/my stomach, afraid to check messages for news of those we’ve been trying to help in case found or killed overnight…Still shaking my head in shock, asking, wondering “what have we done?”
Joe Biden left Washington, DC, early on Friday for a weekend vacation on the beach, even though Americans are still stuck in Afghanistan.
The president and First Lady are scheduled to leave at 12:20 p.m. for his vacation house in Rehoboth Beach — a trip repeatedly postponed in August as he struggled with the disastrous exit from Afghanistan.
The Bidens paid $2.74 million for the home in 2017 but have not visited the property since June for First Lady Jill Biden’s birthday.
The State Department confirmed Wednesday that Americans were still stuck in Afghanistan, but said they were continuing to work with the Taliban to get charter flights with Americans out of areas like Mazar-e-Sharif.
The lack of coverage of the Americans, LPRs, and many thousands of visa-holding Afghan allies still trapped in Afghanistan is a black mark on media. What other live crisis involving Americans held de facto hostage abroad has ever generated less attention from the press. And I cannot imagine that is a response to apathy from the audience, which wouldn’t be a valid excuse anyway. The most charitable interpretation is that the sensitivity of this crisis ensures that the only responsible approach is to keep quiet about it until its resolved. Though an abrogation of the media’s mission, that would make sense. For a week. It’s long past its expiration date. This should be a round-the-clock story. We should know precisely what day of America’s largest hostage crisis we’re on. We should be getting live updates on an hourly basis about how we’re meeting our obligations to our fellow citizens in extremis. But there’s none of that. Why?
Two Qatar airlines flights left Kabul, Afghanistan late last week, but the Biden administration and others were mum over whether the Americans on those flights included a number of individuals who had previously been trapped, awaiting an airlift from a non-governmental organization at Mazar-i-Sharif airport.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters Wednesday that the Biden administration has “pulled every lever available” but that the Taliban still refuses to allow the flights to leave the ground.
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