“They worked around the clock to get American citizens, Afghans who helped us, citizens of our allies and partners, and at-risk Afghans on planes (and) out of the country,” Blinken told the committee. “In the end, we completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with 124,000 people evacuated to safety.”
Lawmakers in both parties remain deeply frustrated that the State Department did not begin a mass evacuation earlier, targeting Afghans who worked for the U.S. military during the war and who are now acutely vulnerable to Taliban reprisals. They are also concerned about the estimated 100 U.S. citizens who are still in Afghanistan and seeking to leave.
But Tuesday’s session was not a bipartisan pile-on. Several Democrats said there was no clean way for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan after years of executing a failed mission that shifted from defeating al-Qaida to nation building.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said Washington pundits and defense contractors are coming out about how the war ended “because they didn’t want it to ever end.”
“They’re mad because they think we should be an occupying force indefinitely, and they know that position is untenable,” he said. “They won’t acknowledge the fundamental mistake was that we invaded a country in Central Asia without a good understanding of its people, its history or origins or of its culture.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said she and other senators tried for years to speed up the special immigrant visa (SIV) process for Afghans who served alongside U.S. troops, as translators and in other roles, but those efforts were stymied by Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration. She questioned how GOP lawmakers could be expressing outrage now over their fate and the fate of Afghan women.
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