Afghan Interpreter Who Helped Rescue Biden in 2008 Left Behind After U.S. Exit - WSJ Thirteen years ago, Afghan interpreter Mohammed helped rescue then- Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators stranded in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm. Now, Mohammed is asking President Biden to save him. “Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed, who asked not to use his full name while in hiding, told The Wall Street Journal as the last Americans flew out of Kabul on Monday. “Don’t forget me here.” Mohammed and his four children are hiding from the Taliban after his yearslong attempt to get out of Afghanistan got tangled in the bureaucracy. They are among countless Afghan allies who were left behind when the U.S. ended its 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan on Monday. Mohammed was a 36-year-old interpreter for the U.S. Army in 2008 when two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters made an emergency landing in Afghanistan during a blinding snowstorm. On board were three U.S. senators: Mr. Biden, the Delaware Democrat, John Kerry, (D., Mass.) and Chuck Hagel, (R., Neb.). As a private security team with the former firm Blackwater and U.S. Army soldiers monitored for any nearby Taliban fighters, the crew sent out an urgent call for help. At Bagram Air Field, Mohammed jumped in a Humvee with a Quick Reaction Force from the 82nd Airborne Division and drove hours into the nearby mountains to rescue them. Mohammed spent much of his time in a tough valley where the soldiers said he was in more than 100 firefights with them. “His selfless service to our military men and women is just the kind of service I wish more Americans displayed,” Lt. Col. Andrew R. Till wrote in June to support Mohammed’s application for a Special Immigrant Visa. Mohammed’s visa application became stuck after the defense contractor he worked for lost the records he needed for his application. Then the Taliban seized Kabul on Aug. 15. Like thousands of others, Mohammed tried his luck by going to the Kabul airport gates, where he was rebuffed by U.S. forces. Mohammed could get in, they told him, but not his wife or their children. Army veterans called lawmakers and issued dire appeals to U.S. officials for help. “If you can only help one Afghan, choose [Mohammed],” wrote Shawn O’Brien, an Army combat veteran who worked with him in Afghanistan in 2008. “He earned it.” A White House official declined to comment, saying the administration couldn’t discuss individual cases for confidentiality reasons. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden, who was then running for vice president, often spoke of the helicopter incident and the trip as a way of burnishing his foreign-policy credentials. “If you want to know where al Qaeda lives, you want to know where [Osama] bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” he said on the campaign trail in October, just months after the February rescue. “Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down…in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.” The trip to Afghanistan was on one of the many overseas trips the three senators took together. Their Army helicopters’ emergency landing in a valley about 20 miles southeast of Bagram Air Field wasn’t in an area that was Taliban-controlled, but it wasn’t exactly friendly. The day before, the 82nd Airborne had killed nearly two dozen Taliban insurgents in a major fight about 10 miles away, said soldiers who fought there at the time. While trying to stay warm in the helicopter, the three men joked about throwing snowballs at the Taliban, the senators said later. “We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn’t have to do it,” Mr. Kerry said after they were rescued. Instead, Mohammed joined the 82nd Airborne Division Humvees and three Blackwater SUVs as they barreled through thick snow to find the helicopters. The senators were sped back to the U.S. base with the convoy, said Matthew Springmeyer, who was leading the Blackwater security in the helicopters that day. Now, Mohammed is in hiding. “I can’t leave my house,” he said on Tuesday. “I’m very scared.”
If I was a foreigner I would never work with the US govt if anything could go sideways , this is all just sad
Is not that common sense? How could anyone with basic integrity and decency work for the army that are invading your country and killing your people daily by hundreds for 20 years??
And yet a lot of these people were eagerly risking life and limb to get out with us …a lot of the fighters lost there lives fighting against brutal people that would shoot you in the head for simply singing which is not allowed. A lot of these people were willing to give up everything to be on our side and we completely turned our backs on them like Biden would do on a press conference with reporters asking questions
That's why you left them there... Their skillset is being traitors. You don't bring home those who helped and cheered for the death of their own people.
The title is so Trumpy.......as in non factual, Biden did not abandon this guy and you act like he called Biden directly and Biden said Hell No dude. Hopefully he gets his paperwork straightened out and he can bring his family, if you read the fine print he was allowed in but not the family. More people will get out, war is hell, I think 20 years and trillions of dollars is enough. For those of you who wanted to stay past the 31st you would be bat **** crazy when the first attack came, make no mistake there would be consequences if we stayed any longer.
Really? What does a lap top owned by the son of Joe Biden have to do with Joe Biden? I hope that they get the guy out, but it isn't like Joe Biden sat at his desk like Joseph Stalin and circled the guys name for execution. It is a nice story that shows how the hubris of President Bush and the ignorance of the American people can lead to terrible things happening during a war and occupation and the eventual withdraw.
OP: How many suicide bombings would have been worth it to sit at the airport waiting for him and the others to get through the suicide bomb target zone??? Seriously… and how do we know if he even tried to go through the airport checkpoints or if he preferred to get out another way? I’m positive that the CIA, and all the vet orgs right now are working their tails off to get an Underground Railroad type of exit strategy for those like this guy who didn’t go to the airport. However you have to understand that the Biden admin can’t just come out abs announce these plans right? Why do you think all of the vet group leaders who had been working to get their guys out stopped going on cable tv??
https://www.businessinsider.com/ste...-blocked-help-afghans-ex-pence-adviser-2021-8 A former Pence adviser said Trump had 4 years to help Afghan allies leave the country but Stephen Miller's 'racist hysteria' blocked it from happening she blasted the Trump administration for its handling of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programs that provide a path to US residency for locals who worked with the US government in Afghanistan.
And yet the majority of Afghans saw the US as the greater evil than the Taliban. That's when you know it is time to leave.
