The reason the failures of troop withdrawal are the central issue in our Afghan policy right now is that the withdrawal appears to have been deliberately conducted in a way that minimized the number of Afghans, including visa holders, who would physically reach the United States https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1427741767307300864 …
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This is not a small matter. We didn't say to these people, "sorry, you're on your own"; we promised for twenty years to protect the most vulnerable from reprisal if they worked with us, used their achievements to boast about our progress, and blamed them after leaving them to die
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There's a deep desire to tie this decision to the long-term costs and conduct of the war, so Biden looks like a strong man making hard choices. But this was a new decision, made by a new Administration, entirely on their own terms. And they chose not only xenophobia, but cynicism
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Bear in mind that even under the original projections for withdrawal (that anticipated Kabul holding out for a few months), evacuation by US forces was impossible from most of the country. And when panic set in, the State Department literally burned applicants' passports.
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Replying to @Pinboard
To be fair, I think the embassies (not just US) were burning passports and other PII documents to mitigate those names ending up on Taliban lists.
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Replying to @nextdoorsv
I understand, but they then require those documents as a precondition for obtaining a visa. Destroying them also prevents the applicants from having any alternative way out of the country.
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Replying to @nextdoorsv @Pinboard
except the hard place here is “a fake requirement we invented and can also wave away in an instant,” so no, not really.
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And the rock is also a fantasy, since these documents could have been evacuated with the embassy staff at any point.
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