As Donald Trump launched a war in Iran over the weekend, many Americans in the Middle East found themselves in a scary situation: They wanted to return to the United States for their own safety, but found that wasn’t a realistic option.
Indeed, NOTUS reported that the Trump administration urged Americans in the region to “depart now” as the conflict intensified, but it also told Americans trying to evacuate the Middle East that they could not “rely” on U.S. government assistance. From the report:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video Tuesday morning telling stranded Americans that they can call a State Department hotline for assistance. Americans who called the hotline received the message that there is no guaranteed travel help available.
‘Please do not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation. At this time, there are currently no United States evacuation points,’ read an automated message on the hotline when NOTUS called the State Department number Tuesday afternoon.
Not surprisingly, there are many members of Congress who are vigorously ringing the alarm, after hearing from constituents eager to return to American soil.
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey told reporters that the belated advisories to Americans in the region represented “one of the biggest derelictions of duty I ever saw.” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut added that the need for evacuations was foreseeable, but the administration “put Americans’ lives at risk” anyway.
A Roll Call report added, “Republicans are, so far, not publicly agreeing with Democrats that the administration should be blamed for leaving substantial numbers of Americans in the lurch. But GOP lawmakers have made plain they are concerned about it.”
With this in mind, a reporter asked Trump during a White House event on Tuesday why there wasn’t a plan in place to bring Americans home safely.
“Well, because it happened all very quickly,” the president replied, referring to the combat operations he launched for reasons he has struggled to explain. He added that he thought “we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked,” despite the inconvenient fact that there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of an imminent threat to the United States from Iran.
In other words, from Trump’s perspective, he didn’t want to strand so many Americans abroad, but circumstances forced his hand and he had to start bombing Iran “very quickly.”
Whether the president appreciates this or not, there are two key flaws in his pitch. The first is that the war didn’t have to start on Feb. 28. He could have delayed the military operation until after there was a system in place to ensure Americans’ safety.
The second is even more notable: This didn’t happen “very quickly.” Trump and his team spent several weeks deploying vast military resources to the Middle East in preparation for the offensive.
There was time, in other words, for the Republican administration to prepare an evacuation plan. By all appearances, however, U.S. officials failed to craft one, and we’re now dealing with the consequences.
