On a recent Saturday afternoon, I took my son to the newly opened Afghanistan and Iraq exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico, Va. As we walked among the weapons, equipment and uniforms, one display stood out. It contained an unusual uniform worn by a Raider, a member of U.S. Marine Corps special operations.
I served in the Raiders and as an adviser to Afghan special operations units between 2008 and 2011. But, like the one on display, the uniform I wore wasn’t American — it was Afghan. I explained to my son that we dressed this way for tactical reasons, but also because implicit in wearing Afghan uniforms was a promise: We and our Afghan allies were one.
The Afghan withdrawal four and a half years ago broke that promise. Today, America has an opportunity to redeem at least a part of it.
The last U.S. military aircraft left Kabul in August 2021. But the withdrawal is not over. More than 1,600 of our Afghan allies are stranded overseas and trying to resettle in the United States. The Trump administration has canceled their entry to the United States as part of a broad suspension of the Refugee Admissions Program. This decision, if not reversed, is yet another betrayal of my former colleagues.
The stranded Afghan refugees are not migrants like those who have come across the southern U.S. border illegally, or even like those who overran the airfield at Kabul International in 2021. They are colleagues of our service members, men and women who have been fully vetted and cleared by the State Department for entry into the United States.
A number of these stranded refugees are former members of the Afghan military who fought in the same types of special operations units that I advised. They are also members of Afghan civil society, including activists who stood up for women’s rights at our country’s urging. Many are family members of U.S. citizens, including children and spouses of active-duty U.S. military personnel.
During the Afghan withdrawal, the Taliban drew up lists of our allies to hunt and kill because they had worked with us. A number of these people are on those lists. Due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of political will, the Biden administration failed to bring them to the United States.
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump heavily criticized Mr. Biden’s withdrawal while standing by his first administration’s decision to negotiate its framework with the Taliban. Mr. Trump’s argument was that the United States needed to get out of Afghanistan, but that the Biden administration botched the execution. Now he is making the same mistakes his predecessor made.
One of the denunciations leveled by critics of the Biden administration was that abandoning our Afghan allies after the withdrawal harmed the credibility of the United States. This was a fair criticism then, and it is a fair criticism now. The United States is confronting a world as turbulent as any since the end of the Second World War. In addition to enduring threats from terrorist groups like ISIS, it is a world characterized by the return of great power competition. This country doesn’t fight on its own; it has always fought alongside its allies.
During the withdrawal I was one of thousands of American veterans who worked on what came to be called a “digital Dunkirk.” We used our phones and encrypted apps to save the lives of Afghan friends and colleagues when the U.S. government abandoned them. We made lists of Afghans who required assistance, shepherded them onto convoys and helped them navigate checkpoints.
I was personally involved with several hundred Afghan evacuation cases. We knew that eventually our efforts would have to end — we would have to tell the remaining, deserving Afghans begging for our help that we couldn’t help them any more, that the last flight had left. Since then, the Taliban have taken retribution against some of them; others have fled the country or remain in hiding inside of Afghanistan.
The Trump administration has a powerful opportunity here, not only to honor the lives of our allies but also the sacrifices of a generation of American veterans who served in their country. By bringing this group of vetted Afghans to the United States, Mr. Trump would differentiate himself from Mr. Biden and show that he would have handled the aftermath of the withdrawal differently. He would also send a signal that the United States is reliable, even as we are renegotiating our relationships with international partners.
Surely many around the world are watching — in Ukraine, for example, which itself is in a war of strategic consequence to the United States..
On inauguration day, Mr. Trump vowed that under his new administration he would create “peace through strength.” But peace through strength has never been solely about American might. This is why in the arena of great power competition — from the First and Second World Wars to the Cold War — the United States has won. We have forged strong, enduring alliances.
Breaking faith with former allies projects weakness to current, and future, partners. Weakness will never breed peace. And fighting without allies means that any future losses will primarily be our own.
The post The Moral and Strategic Case for Taking in the Afghan Refugees appeared first on New York Times.
