Wall Street Journal editorial calls for more attention to Americans still stranded in Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is calling for more attention to be given to Americans still stranded in Afghanistan, despite the Biden administration's earlier insistence that the number remaining was minimal.

In a Sunday editorial, the board argued the stranded Americans deserved more attention, called out the White House for making it harder to extract them, and implored Republicans to promise a "serious" inquiry into President Biden's disastrous withdrawal ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

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"Remember Afghanistan? The White House would like to forget, but the Americans and Afghan allies still stranded in the country deserve more attention," the board wrote while also noting that the State Department had assisted 479 Americans and 450 lawful permanent residents in leaving Afghanistan since the Aug. 31 withdrawal of U.S. personnel.

In contrast to the number of Americans actually extracted by the State Department, the Biden administration claimed on the final day of the withdrawal that there were only 100 to 200 Americans still in the country "with some intention to leave."

The board also noted that White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained the discrepancy by claiming that the number of people who determined they wanted to leave the country changed.

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According to a source cited by the board, the State Department is currently tracking 126 Americans still in Afghanistan with only five ready to depart with the necessary travel documents. The information provided by the source followed the State Department claiming earlier in December that it "is currently in touch with fewer than a dozen U.S. citizens who want to leave Afghanistan, are prepared to depart, and have the necessary travel documents."

"This may be technically true given all the qualifiers attached to the number," the board wrote.

"Private organizations and congressional offices have supplemented the Administration’s efforts, but sources on Capitol Hill say a lack of transparency from the Administration has made the job more difficult," the board added. "Accurate information has been hard to get. When information occasionally is released, it tends to focus on positive numbers like total repatriations and relocations instead of those left behind."

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The board mentioned there were also thousands of abandoned Afghan allies who assisted the U.S. during the war, as well as their families, and were waiting on their Special Immigrant Visas to be approved. It noted that 33,000 were already approved, but that it could take "well into 2022" before they were actually evacuated. 

"The top brass at the State Department and in the White House seem to be doing everything they can to ignore the deadly catastrophe they created," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told the board in a statement. "Congressional Democrats are helping them by refusing to participate in a robust and comprehensive investigation with us."

The board referenced an August tweet by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that declared there was no deadline in helping those remaining in Afghanistan to leave.

"But the White House made that task far harder when it set the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing troops and diplomats from the country without preparing to get all Americans, U.S. residents, and allies out," the board wrote.

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"Promising a serious inquiry into the Afghan withdrawal disaster would be a useful GOP campaign promise to make in next year’s congressional elections," it added.