Sudan Shows Leaving Americans Behind Enemy Lines is the New Normal

Daniel Greenfield May 01, 2023 

 In 2006, 25,000 Americans were trapped behind enemy lines in Lebanon. Hezbollah had attacked Israel and the Shiite Muslim terror group which had overwhelmed the formerly Christian nation had once again dragged it into a destructive war.

The Bush administration responded by hiring a cruise ship, the Orient Queen, which brought over 1,000 Americans to Cyprus. The massive cruise ship was part of a rescue flotilla that included the USS Nashville (as captured in an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations who was evacuated aboard the cruiser), the USS Trenton, on one of its final voyages, along with hired civilian vessels from other nations that got Americans out.

Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, announced that the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group was being moved into position so “that we have the capability to extract people, no matter where their location is.”

The Biden administration has taken a very different approach with the estimated 16,000 Americans trapped in Sudan.

Two Americans are dead in Sudan after Biden, once again, washed his hands of them.

“It is not our standard procedure to evacuate American citizens living abroad,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, fresh off celebrating Lesbian Visibility Week with the cast of The L-Word, announced.

In the Biden administration, lesbians are visible, Americans looking to get home aren’t.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the family,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby whined. And then announced that, “We continue to make clear at the highest levels of our government the leadership of both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces that they are responsible for ensuring the protection of civilians and noncombatants.”

The Rapid Support Forces, better known as the Janjaweed, are a Islamic Jihadist operation infamous for its mass rapes and massacres of Christians.

“Men were mutilated and murdered, women raped, and children kidnapped.” One survivor described how, “they raped us in a group. Some women were raped by 8 or 10 men. Seventeen women were raped together. All of us were raped. Even the underage girls were raped.”

Instead of taking responsibility for protecting American lives, the Biden administration is once again telling Islamic terrorists, first the Taliban in Afghanistan, now the Janjaweed/RSF in Sudan, that it’s their job to protect Americans. Not his job.

Karine Jean-Pierre, as usual, was lying. Both Republican and Democrat administrations had a long proud history of evacuating Americans from war zones.

During the racist Muslim riots in Indonesia in 1998, the Clinton administration prepped more than “10,000 American troops and a flotilla of United States Navy ships” if needed to evacuate an estimated 6,000 Americans. The Clinton administration had helped evacuate Americans from Albania and dispatched troops to Zaire to get Americans out of the country.

This was so commonplace and routine that we took it for granted. Until Obama.

Obama set the precedent of abandoning Americans in Benghazi. But what Obama did on a small scale, Biden has once again implemented on a much larger scale. The abandonment of thousands of Americans behind enemy lines in Afghanistan was not an aberration. Sudan has made it clear that abandoning Americans is the formal new policy.

“Americans should have no expectation of a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation at this time, and we expect that’s going to remain the case,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned.

And claimed that it’s “not as simple as jumping in a taxicab”.

True, it’s not. That’s why we spend hundreds of billions on a military and diplomatic infrastructure that is capable of doing more than jumping into a D.C. taxicab to get some drinks.

Not all that long ago, during the Lebanon War, the State Department figured out how to hire a cruise ship, bring together vessels from different countries and planes to transport Americans to Cyprus and Turkey. They were on the phone with a ship urging its captain to miss his deadline to sail so that Americans could board. Maybe there was more time to do that without Lesbian Visibility Week and all the other narcissistic exercises in virtue signaling that define the Left.

Rescuing Americans isn’t easy, but it’s a nice break from those demanding cocktail parties, Zoom meetings and press briefings that the State Department and the NSC are busy at.

What was an outrage under Obama has now solidified into a new normal. Biden administration officials dismiss even the notion that they have any responsibility to evacuate Americans.

“Shouldn’t Americans abroad expect some help from their government?” a reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre.

“It is not our standard procedure to evacumate — evacuate American citizens living abroad… the State Department does its best to provide information to citizens who are abroad and — and giving them the warning when necessary.” Jean-Pierre, resenting having to take time out from partying with the L-Word cast, responded with blithe contempt.

It may no longer be standard procedure for America, but the British, the French, the Germans and even the Italians are getting their citizens out. Much as some of them did in Afghanistan.

During that evacuation, the Biden administration refused to go out and get Americans, and woke generals yelled at their European partners that they were making them look bad. But the British weren’t making American generals look bad. Biden was disgracing America. And by going along with his treasonous policy of leaving Americans behind, they were disgracing themselves.

“The government has begun a large-scale evacuation of British passport holders from Sudan on RAF flights,” UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted. “I pay tribute to the British Armed Forces, diplomats and Border Force staff.”

Is there a reason that the Brits, the French and the Italians, who not only evacuated their own people, but the Vatican staff and Swiss citizens, can do this, but that America can’t?

Obviously we can. The Clinton and the Bush administrations did it. Evacuating Americans used to be the norm before Lesbian Visibility Week became the norm.

Obama and Biden have made a point of refusing to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan and Sudan because they wanted to make the point that the military and diplomats were not there to serve national interests, but global ones. Americans should not expect the State Department or the military to protect them just because of their birthright or citizenship. American institutions no longer serve Americans, only leftist causes. Their mission is equity and inclusion, it’s Lesbian Visibility Week: not rescuing people who happen to have an American passport week.

And that’s the way it will stay until Americans take back their country from the un-American Left.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles.  Thank you for reading.