The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan was a chaotic disaster that left American citizens and foreign allies stranded in the country — and now there’s another insight into why that happened.
Rear Adm. Peter Vasely testified that the evacuation was impeded as “everyone from the White House down with a new flavor of the day for prioritization” bombarded the U.S. operations center in Kabul with requests for special favors, according to The Washington Post.
Vasely, the top U.S. commander in Kabul as U.S. forces abruptly pulled out in time for President Joe Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline, shared this in sworn statements during an Army investigation into the Aug. 26 bombing of the Kabul airport, according to the report.
The suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. service members and more than a hundred Afghan civilians days before the deadline and further hampered evacuation efforts.
At the time, officials on the ground in Kabul were coordinating a systematic evacuation, prioritizing American citizens and those with permanent resident status followed by Afghans who cooperated with the war effort.
Instead, they were stuck fielding text messages, phone calls and emails by the thousands from the White House, Congress, media outlets, Afghanistan war veterans and even the Vatican.
When asked to verify whether some of those favors being called in came from first lady Jill Biden and Pope Francis, Vasely responded, “That’s accurate.”
“I was being contacted by representatives from the Holy See to assist the Italian military contingent … in getting through groups … of special interest to the Vatican. That is just one of many examples,” the admiral said, according to documents obtained through the Post’s Freedom of Information Act request.
“I cannot stress enough how these high-profile requests ate up bandwidth and created competition for already stressed resources,” Vasely said, calling them a “distraction.”
Rear Adm Peter Vasely, speaking to an Army investigator, said he “only can speculate” whether American citizens did not get out of Afghanistan by the end of August because of a surge in requests by advocates that didn’t match up to stated U.S. priorities.https://t.co/DsBUyvBh4M
— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) February 10, 2022
Former Obama administration Defense Department official Mark Jacobson said the process deteriorated from an orderly effort based on priority to a desperate free-for-all.
“Once it became the ‘Hunger Games,'” volunteer groups that previously had been providing names of the prioritized individuals “tried to get whomever we could through the gates.”
Jacobson was comparing the situation to the kill-or-be-killed scenario portrayed in the popular dystopian novel and film series.
That comparison would seem hyperbolic without the proof provided in the footage of desperate evacuees clinging to an American plane as it took off.
“Chaotic scenes as Afghans attempt to cling to U.S. Air Force plane departing from Kabul,” BBC News described the jarring scene on Aug. 16.
Chaotic scenes as Afghans attempt to cling to US Air Force plane departing from Kabul
Latest: https://t.co/eRDvQGay6B pic.twitter.com/moOTTuxoF9
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) August 16, 2021
Later footage would show the disturbing moments when those people clinging to the aircraft dropped from the sky.
Biden’s chaotic, ill-planned exit from the 20-year war created many tragedies but none so heartbreaking as the news of Americans left behind.
Though the State Department has been cagey about the numbers, officials eventually copped to there being an estimated 450 Americans left behind after the last aircraft took off from Afghanistan.
Perhaps if Biden had been better at his job, it wouldn’t have been necessary for the first lady to call in favors for the family.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.