We know Joe Biden sucks at math, which isn’t a huge problem when he’s claiming he vaccinated 350 million Americans. When it comes to the number of Americans he stranded in Afghanistan however, it’s quite important. The Biden administration can’t seem to get their numbers to add up about the number of U.S. citizens left behind, but it really looks like they abandoned thousands of Americans.
As the final troops pulled out of Afghanistan, White House press secretary Jen Psaki bragged that 6,000 Americans had been evacuated. In his “victory” speech, proclaiming the troop withdrawal a total success, Biden adjusted that number to 5,500 Americans rescued from the Taliban.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that less than 200 Americans remain stranded in Afghanistan, claiming the number is, “likely closer to 100.”
In his speech where Biden said 5,500 Americans were evacuated he added this puzzling statistic:
“The bottom line, 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave,” said Biden.
If we can get past the fact that Biden thinks abandoning 10% of the stranded Americans is a roaring success, there’s some funny math going on here. If 5,500 rescued Americans represent 90%, that means he left 605 U.S. citizens behind, not 100 or so.
That seems bad but the Biden administration math is way off:
On August 15, as Kabul fell to the Taliban, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan estimated that there were between 10,000 and 60,000 Americans in Afghanistan. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby gave an estimate of between 5,000 and 10,000 and another Pentagon estimate put it between 15,000 and 40,000.
NBC reported on August 17 that 15,500 Americans needed to be evacuated from Afghanistan, based on numbers given to the Senate during a briefing led by national security and defense officials. That seems like the most reliable number, so let’s work with that.
If 15,000 Americans needed to be evacuated from Afghanistan and Biden only evacuated 5,500, simple math says that there are 9,500 Americans still stranded. That’s way more than the 100 Blinken claims or the 605 Biden said.
The Biden administration has been waffling on the numbers of Americans they left behind but there is a very easy way to get an accurate number. Just look at the hit list of Americans Biden gave to the Taliban and check off the ones who got out. What remains is the exact number of U.S. citizens they abandoned.
Biden’s people have bragged that they evacuated 116,000 people in two weeks. If only 5,500 of those evacuated are Americans, this boast is pretty f*cked up. The supposed mission was to get all of the Americans out first, but the vast majority taken in the airlifts were unvetted Afghans. Wow, you took out 110,500 people, some of who are most certainly terrorists, but you left almost 10,000 American. That ain’t something anyone should pat themselves on the back for.
The White House may be trying to slip these low numbers by on a technicality. Maybe they mean there are only a few hundred living Americans still stranded in Afghanistan. The Taliban has been doing house-to-house executions so maybe there aren’t that many Americans left in need of rescue.
Leaving one American behind is one too many but it really looks like Biden abandoned nearly 10,000 U.S. citizens. The fact that the mess in Afghanistan is entirely due to Biden’s gross incompetence makes this the biggest avoidable human catastrophe in U.S. history.
