By Fred Lucas
The State Department’s admission that three times as many Americans remain in Afghanistan as officials originally estimated marks the most recent controversy resulting from President Joe Biden’s hasty withdrawal of troops.
The botched pullout ending America’s longest war was punctuated early on with a terrorist bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members at the airport in the capital of Kabul.
Taliban militants overran cities throughout Afghanistan as the U.S. relinquished control of Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, leaving behind billions of dollars worth of weapons and other military equipment.
Here are four things to know about the situation in Afghanistan, and what the Biden administration told Americans then and now.
1. ‘Slow-Motion Hostage Crisis’?
After the news Friday that the State Department had counted 363 Americans remaining in Afghanistan, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called the situation a “slow-motion hostage crisis.”
“The Biden administration has shamelessly and repeatedly lied about the number of Americans trapped behind Taliban lines,” Sasse said in a public statement.
Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other administration officials had estimated that 100 to 200 Americans remained in Afghanistan after the Aug. 31 retreat.
“For weeks, their official number was ‘about a hundred’ and it magically never changed—as Americans slowly got out, the total number never went down,” Sasse said, adding:
Now they say more than 300 Americans are still in Afghanistan. The Biden administration lied to hide the consequences of the president’s morally indefensible decision to abandon our people in a war zone. This slow-motion hostage crisis and the administration’s cover-up are disgraceful. Mr. President, bring our people home.
Perhaps the most notable hostage crisis in U.S. history occurred when Iranian militants held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. That number is significantly fewer Americans than are estimated to be in Afghanistan now, but the Iran hostage crisis involved holding American diplomats and embassy personnel as prisoners in one location.
The circumstances in Afghanistan could turn into a hostage situation, said Jim Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal.
That threat remains despite the fact that the Biden administration is considering unfreezing Taliban assets, he said.
“They have a financial disincentive to take American hostages,” Phillips told The Daily Signal. “But they have an ideological and perhaps cultural incentive to take hostages.”
Phillips added that if the leadership of the Taliban, considered to be a terrorist group, maintained discipline for financial purposes, splinter groups still could threaten Americans who remain in Afghanistan.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the higher number of Americans left behind than first announced demonstrates a “betrayal.”
“What we long suspected is now confirmed: What the White House calls a historically successful airlift was in reality the worst-ever betrayal of American citizens in a foreign land,” Issa told Fox News. “So they lied about it from the beginning.”