WASHINGTON — The Biden administration defended leaving roughly 26,000 Afghan interpreters behind as the Afghan government falls to the Taliban as a strategic decision on Monday, with officials claiming the failure to evacuate translators was not an oversight but rather a deliberate move due to an ongoing need for translation of cries for help in Pashto to English.
“You don’t think we knew how quickly the Afghan government would crumble as soon as we left?” said White House spokesman Jen Psaki. “But if we don’t have bodies on the ground that can translate things like ‘beheading’, ‘sex slave’, ‘death to America’, and ‘oh God please help us’, how else would we keep our eye on these Taliban guys?”
Many critics questioned whether the decision was actually strategic, or simply an attempt to whitewash the administration's failure to secure visas and safe passage for the thousands of interpreters that risked their lives to assist American forces before leaving the country in the dead of night.
