Washington could still save face in Afghan mess, according to La Crosse’s Heim

The Taliban is back in charge of Afghanistan, refugees could be sent to Fort McCoy, and President Biden seems to be getting most of the blame for how the situation has gone.  But political scientist Joe Heim in La Crosse says that despite the mistakes made in Washington, there’s still a chance the U.S. can do something to fix the crisis.

“A lot depends on what happens in the next seven days,” Heim told Mike Hayes on WIZM’s La Crosse Talk.  “I have some hope, yes. Government generally seems to get into gear when they have to, and pretty clearly State Department has dropped the ball on this, intelligence community has dropped the ball on it, but basically they still have some time to recover.”

As for who may be at fault for the sudden collapse of the Afghan government, Heim says there’s “a lot of potential blame here to be spread around,” including the former Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department still says Fort McCoy near Sparta is one of up to three military bases which could process thousands of Afghans coming to America.  

Garry Reid, director of the Department of Defense’s Afghanistan Crisis Action Group, told reporters yesterday that the U.S. Army is working to set up reception centers for Afghan refugees at Fort McCoy and Fort Bliss in Texas. He says the Army is preparing to receive as many as 22,000 refugees at the two bases as well as at Fort Lee in Virginia.