If you are looking to put the Biden Administration at a loss for words, all you have to do is simply bring up the Taliban. This “administration” is now puzzled as to what to do regarding the fact that several planes holding Americans are stuck on the Kabul runway waiting for clearance from the Taliban before they can take off. The best that the Biden Administration could do was simply claim that they “do not control the airspace.”
The Background
News surfaced last Sunday that as many as six planes were holding American citizens hostage and keeping them stranded at the Mazar-I-Sharif International Airport for days on end as Taliban leaders simply seem to be holding them for ransom in an attempt to extract more out of the United States before they will allow them to leave.
A document sent to members of Congress shows that the state department said the flights were cleared to depart for Doha, Qatar, but they will only do so “if and when the Taliban agrees to takeoff.”
“The Taliban is basically holding them hostage to get more out of the Americans,” a congressional source said to CBS News.
This was the latest blunder in this administration’s bungled attempts to withdraw from Afghanistan late last month, which has resulted in hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan nationals still stranded in the Taliban-controlled nation.
Of course, the military has now ended the military mission, which means that the United States now appears to lack the military presence or diplomatic personnel to get these stranded Americans out of there safely.
What is the administration saying?
In response to the questioning from our sister publication The Blaze on Monday, the State Department effectively did nothing more than throw their hands up in the air, dodging the question and saying that there is not much that they can do at this point.
“We understand the concern that many people are feeling as they try to facilitate further charter and other passage out of Afghanistan. However, we do not have personnel on the ground, we do not have air assets in the country, we do not control the airspace — whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region,” a State Department spokesman said.
The spokesman also added that the department also does have any type of “reliable means” to verify the identity of these passengers that are effectively being held against their will.
“Given these constraints, we also do not have a reliable means to confirm the basic details of charter flights, including who may be organizing them, the number of U.S. citizens and other priority groups on-board, the accuracy of the rest of the manifest, and where they plan to land, among many other issues,” the spokesman said.
Despite all of this, the spokesman noted the State Department will continue to “hold the Taliban to its pledge to let people freely depart Afghanistan.”
What else?
The apparent inaction of this administration would definitely contradict the message that it relayed to the American people in regards to them following the conclusion of their incomplete withdrawal in late August.
Just last month, Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie acknowledged, “We did not get out everybody we wanted to get out,” but they continued to insist that the “department of state was going to work very hard so that they could allow any American citizens that are left” to obtain passage out of their country.
Others in this administration had likewise promised that the United States would work tirelessly to get these remaining Americans safely home.
It was Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby who also admitted that he “did not foresee a military role” in the evacuation of the remaining Americans, even stressing that the administration would “use other tools available to us as a government to help the safe passage of Americans get out of that country.”
What is this? A total clown car or what?