
Trump has signaled he may halt the U.S. resettlement program for the Afghans who risked everything to fight alongside American troops — and is reportedly negotiating to offload as many as 1,100 of them to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Among them: interpreters, former Afghan Special Operations Forces, and roughly 400 children of U.S. service members, all stranded in Qatar for over a year after we evacuated them and then walked away. Paul Rieckhoff calls it what it is — a disgusting, shameful betrayal, and the latest compounding failure in a collapse that Biden owns, Trump owns, and Washington refuses to fix.
This solo briefing lays out the stakes clearly: sending these allies to Congo is effectively a death sentence, particularly for the women and girls, and it deepens the moral injury eating at American veterans who made promises in combat that their country won’t keep. Beyond the human cost, there’s a strategic cost — every ally we abandon is one more reason the next interpreter, the next tribal leader, the next local fighter refuses to stand with U.S. troops downrange. Our enemies are celebrating. Our veterans are not. And the Angry Middle needs to pay attention.
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