White House to Americans trapped in Sudan: You're on your own

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

In an all too familiar pattern, the White House is telling American citizens stranded in war-torn Sudan that they are on their own now. White House co-spokesperson John Kirby said Monday that it isn’t able to evacuate the Americans who remain in Sudan while the two powerful military rival factions battle for control of the country.

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Sunday the United States evacuated U.S. embassy personnel. That was less than 100 people. There are about 16,000 American citizens left in Sudan. Many are dual citizens. Instead of securing the embassy with American security, thus allowing the Americans a chance at receiving help to get out of the country, the embassy was closed and the staff was flown to Ethiopia.

‘We’re going to do everything we can to help guide people, get them the information they need to get out safely. But it is not safe right now for another evacuation attempt. That would put Americans in more danger, not less,’ Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said on CBS Mornings.

All they can do is hunker down and try to wait it out. The standard operating procedure for the Biden administration is to violate a long-held American motto – leave no American behind. Team Biden is known for leaving thousands of Americans behind in dangerous hot spots. Remember, Biden was supposed to be the expert on foreign policy. He was bringing back normal to the White House. What happened to all that expertise? It was never there in the first place. The dirty little secret about Biden’s foreign policy history is that he is always wrong. Former Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, who worked with him in the Obama administration, said, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” The man is completely inept and it’s a dangerous thing.

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One Republican woman lawmaker is calling out Biden for his incompetence.

“Joe Biden has had to evacuate FOUR embassies in less than 3 years. The media said Biden & Blinken were ‘experts’ and ‘the adults are back in charge.’ The world has been on FIRE since their disaster in Afghanistan. Pray for our country & the 16,000 Americans Biden left in Sudan,” Miller wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

In addition to Sudan, the United States has also suspended embassy operations in Afghanistan after withdrawing its troops in August 2021 and in Ukraine when Russia invaded the Eastern European country last February. However, the embassy in Ukraine reopened last May. The U.S. has also suspended operations in Belarus—whose President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin—due to “security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack.”

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We knew when we watched the disastrous evacuation from Afghanistan in real time that we were screwed with this administration. Biden disregards advice from his military and diplomatic experts and goes his own way. He thinks he is the smartest person in the room. He’s not. Biden is a feeble old man who is out to prove he can save America from Donald Trump. Or something. It’s been a failed experiment since he was sworn in and he is running for another term. No one wants him to run again, not even Democrats who like his policies. Yet, here we are.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. will help Americans in Sudan in creating safety plans for themselves. Safety plans? Antony Blinken is Biden’s partner in incompetence. He received his plum job as a reward for organizing a letter signed by 51 intelligence community members that vouched for a bogus story that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian disinformation plot. It can’t be stated strongly enough what a disaster Biden and Blinken are for homeland security and America’s position in the world.

Jake Sullivan seems to think some Americans are evacuating by trucks in convoys.

But White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said later Monday that the U.S. was assisting some evacuations.

”We are providing the kind of support and facilitation to help Americans who want to be able to leave and Americans are in the process of availing availing themselves of that,’ he said at the White House press briefing.

But, when questioned, he said the assistance was to convoys arriving at the Red Sea with people looking to depart via Port Sudan.

Some U.S. civilians are in a U.N.-led convoy en route to the Red Sea, which the U.S. is monitoring.

Sullivan said the U.S. has placed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets over the land evacuation route to help facilitate safe travel by land from Khartoum to the Port of Sudan.

But the U.S. does not have any troops on the ground.

‘We have started to see a more regular pattern of convoys begin to arrive, including convoys that have Americans in them,’ Sullivan said. ‘Once at the port then we are using diplomatic facilities in neighboring countries to help those Americans with their onward travel so that they can get safely out of the country.’

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John Kirby said the same thing this morning in a television interview. These are the White House talking points. He said that “several dozen Americans making their way through Sudan in a U.N. led convoy, a convoy over which the U.S. has got some intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets to ensure their safety.” Several dozen isn’t 16,000 but probably not all those in Sudan are trying to get out. Still, that’s a very small number.

All they can do at this point is hope that the 72-hour cease-fire announced today will help those who want to get out of the country. This administration continues to react defensively, not offensively. They wait until the crisis is in play before acting. That’s a dangerous way to run a White House.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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