Biden needs to authorize military to save stranded Americans in Afghanistan, Crenshaw says

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Edmund DeMarche | Fox News


President Biden must authorize the U.S. military to expand the perimeter around the Kabul airport and retake an important airfield to help with evacuations, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, tweeted early Friday.

Crenshaw served as a Navy SEAL for a decade and was wounded in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province in 2012.

"Two things need to happen, and only Biden can authorize: 1. US military must be allowed to operate outside Kabul airport to get American citizens. 2: Retake Bagram airfield, thus giving us more options for evacuations. Biden created this mess and needs to take decisive action," he tweeted.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also called on Biden to act swiftly to save Americans who are, in effect, "hostages of the Taliban."

Cotton laid into the president over his administration’s "ill-planned, chaotic withdrawal" in the country, which was followed by additional subsequent blunders, including "relying on the Taliban’s good graces to ensure the safety of our citizens."

The Republican pointed to other western countries—like Britain and France—that are said to have deployed teams of specialized forces to extract citizens behind Taliban lines. The Washington Post reported that Paris deployed an elite police team to pick up nationals and Afghans who’ve been sheltering at the city's old French embassy. The report also said that British paratroopers have been deployed on rescue missions.
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Cotton, who served with the 101st Airborne Division and saw combat in Iraq, said if Biden does not rescue trapped Americans it would amount "to an abandonment of our fellow Americans and a shameful abdication of duty in a moment of crisis."

The Biden administration on Thursday acknowledged reports that evacuees were having trouble reaching the international airport and Kabul, which is surrounded by Taliban checkpoints.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said during a Thursday news briefing that the government had received a "small handful of reports" of American citizens who were unable to reach the airport. But he also said that though U.S. officials were aware of reports that interpreters and former Afghan military officers were being hunted and killed by the Taliban forces, he could not confirm their veracity.
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Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, vowed to bring home all the Americans stuck in the country. The U.S. is believed to have about 6,000 troops there.

Fox News' Michael Ruiz and the Associated Press contributed to this report

[lost in melb.]

Tread carefully, but it might be the only way.

What I want to know is who these 10to 40,000 Americans are, their names and/or pictures, where they were born, and what they're doing in Afghanistan :popcorn:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Tread carefully, but it might be the only way.

What I want to know is who these 10to 40,000 Americans are, their names and/or pictures, where they were born, and what they're doing in Afghanistan :popcorn:

If I had to guess? The vast majority are probably people working with the US State Dept, independent contractors like civil engineers and construction workers, family members, probably some missionaries mixed in, and probably some naturalized US citizens that originally came from Afghanistan that were there visiting family.

There's one Afghan family from Colorado (adults have become US citizens and they have 2 daughters that were born here and are citizens) that were in Afghanistan visiting family when this whole clusterfuck began and now they are stuck there with no way to get back out. It was all on the local news here. I'm sure there is a lot of that going on.

[lost in melb.]

Thanks, that's actually a really common sense take. I haven't been able to get that information from the media.

I've really good Afghan Australian friend. He's such a nice guy I can't tell you. Came here when he was a teen. Very inviting personality, hard worker and not the littlest bit a violent psychopath.

Finally found out after many years that he's a Muslim. He really doesn't talk about it or make much of a big deal about it.

I think the current administration has really cocked this up. They should have slammed things in reverse and made sure that Kabul was not taken by the Taliban until the civilians are out of Kabul. (I think it's a lot to expect then to fish everyone out of other parts of the Afghanistan). Now whether this would have precipitated another shooting war, we don't know. A tough call. But if the current situation turns bad it's going to be really bad.

[Pony]

From what I understand (and simplified) the Afgan military there was trained by us to have US air support, and we pulled that support way too early. What a clusterfuck.

[RBP]

The Brits have gone in with paratroopers to extract. There's no reason we can't do the same. Who the fuck gave up the airbase? Send in the big guns and fuck them up.