Shocking neglect: Biden’s team ignored 325,000 emails from Afghan allies needing rescue
In the time in between the 2009 and 2011 surge of U.S. forces into Afghanistan that U.S. military officials and diplomats have repeatedly used to criticize the Obama administration’s handling of the war, Biden’s office failed to respond to calls for aid from dozens of key Afghans.
As of March 30, Biden’s office had sent only one email alert to the president: a one-paragraph message about 1,900 miles away.
The failure to help these people, who had repeatedly given the administration’s own military advisers advice, underscores the point that while Biden might be a highly regarded war hero, he’s less of a hawk than many of the president’s closest aides.
Since January of 2011, Biden’s staff has responded to just seven emails from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to the White House, according to State Department records. At the time of the Kabul embassy email exchange in February, nearly 900,000 emails at the State Department had been sent to the White House, of which nearly 400,000 were classified Top Secret and above. By comparison, U.S. military commanders had received more than 1.8 million in the last six years — or an average of more than 15 per day.
The lack of intervention, and the fact that Biden himself was not a major force behind the aid efforts, are further signs that the president’s national security team may be in disarray.
Biden’s staff responded to only five other requests for aid — all of which were from the Afghan government.
The failure to intervene shows, once again, the extent to which the Obama administration’s top national security officials are hamstrung by the White House itself.
In a statement provided by the Obama campaign Tuesday, campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said the president will “continue to stand up for the men and women of our military and intelligence professionals, and we’ll continue to protect them as our national security and foreign policy continue to be threatened by an increasingly radical Islamic regime that would rather threaten America with attacks than negotiate.”
Obama has said he