For retired Green Berets like Matt Coburn, who served five tours in conflicts, the war is not over.
“Once everybody left on Aug. 31, we’ve been just trying to keep them alive,” Coburn said, referring to Afghan elite commandos who could not get through Kabul airport gates. “The huge barrier we faced is because they were all fighting until the end, none of them had planned to leave and hadn’t applied for special immigration” target=”_blank”>immigrant<
Coburn receives almost daily text images through WhatsApp showing what the Taliban is doing to those left behind. Images of female Afghan soldiers with bruises all over their backs, arms and legs from where they were hit with rubber hoses. A video of an Afghan officer who worked with an elite U.S. tiered unit surfaced showing him and his entire family being executed. Afghan forces are being rounded up and simply disappearing.
(Handout/Fox News)
Another photo shows the slit throat of a soldier in Kunduz province executed by the Taliban during a search for his commando brother.
President joe-biden” target=”_blank”>Biden< says it has evacuated 105 American citizens and 95 lawful permanent residents since Aug. 31 but says it is difficult verifying manifests for private charters that need their assistance to land.
“Many of the passengers were not in fact eligible for relocation (to the) United States and, in some cases, that despite vetting to the best of our ability, the manifests were not accurate,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
MARINE WHO WAS JAILED FOR SPEAKING OUT ON AFGHANISTAN TO BE RELEASED FROM BRIG TUESDAY
The issue of Afghan resettlement has bipartisan support among veterans.
A consortium of 25 veteran nonprofits formed Welcome US to show their support for resettling Afghans in the US.
A new survey of veterans from Blue Star Families and Welcome US found:
• 77% said the United States has an obligation to help those fleeing Afghanistan.
• 46% of respondents who served in Afghanistan have already taken action to help Afghan refugees.
“What I’ve found is that the Afghans that are in our country are so grateful to be here,” former Army Ranger Nick Palmisciano, who is part of Welcome US and Save Our Allies, told Fox. “They want to race to become productive members of society here.”
Palmisciano and members of the Independence Fund recently visited Fort McCoy, where 12,000 Afghans are still waiting to be resettled. Most of the evacuees are women and children. Save Our Allies, a partnership between The Independence Fund and The Mighty Oaks Foundation, has hundreds of veteran volunteers working at all 8 military” target=”_blank”>U.S. military < community saying this is the thing that we can affect, regardless of anything else.”
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It’s a promise to allies and Afghan friends whose family members risked their lives for the U.S. government during 20 years of war, and it is helping veterans heal. But these veterans groups say, given the uptick of Taliban attacks and examples of torture and executions of those Afghans who helped the U.S., time is running out.
