{"id":37457,"date":"2013-09-06T14:54:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T18:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37457"},"modified":"2013-09-07T13:57:35","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T17:57:35","slug":"abandoning-our-allies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37457","title":{"rendered":"Abandoning our allies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy sends a link from Yahoo News<\/a> in regards to the interpreters and other folks who helped the troops in Afghanistan who get that Vietnam feeling from our rush to the exits that leaves them behind despite the dangers they face with their families;<\/p>\n

\u201cEach second, each minute, each hour I feel that I am not safe,\u201d says Shinwari, a 35-year-old married father of two young children.<\/p>\n

With the U.S. steadily withdrawing from his homeland, Shinwari knows he needs out too. But despite applying to move to the U.S. two years ago under a special immigration program for people who helped American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, Shinwari is still waiting for an answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey won\u2019t tell us why it takes so long,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Shinwari is one of thousands of interpreters and military aides bogged down in the visa bureaucracy, according to the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, a New York-based legal services agency that helps applicants try to navigate the red tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe applications just kind of get stuck from stage to stage to stage,\u201d Katie Reisner, the nonprofit\u2019s national policy director, told Yahoo News.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s pretty much the reason that we couldn’t get them all to go along with us in the war against the the Taliban in the first place. We don’t have a good record of taking care of our allies when we leave a country behind, not because our troops can’t win a complete and decisive victory, but because we mired in the politics at home and the politicians can’t summon the courage to see a war through or the courage to take care of the people who took care of us.<\/p>\n

The article goes on to say that the State Department has only approved 22% of the applications from Iraq and only 15% of those from Afghanistan. Borrowing from the Veterans Affairs Department, the State Department explains;<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall processing times have improved significantly in the past two years, but they\u2019re not always predictable,\u201d the official said. \u201cEach case is unique.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s so very reassuring, I suppose, to someone who thanks God every morning when he wakes up that he and his family lived through another night.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> Aunty Brat<\/a> writes to tell us that the UK is screwing their interpreters, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy sends a link from Yahoo News in regards to the interpreters and other folks who … Abandoning our allies<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}