Ross: We’re about to find out who really wants Afghan refugees in US

I’ve listened to just about every news conference on the Afghanistan evacuation in the past week, and there’s a lot of anger, but there also seems to be a bipartisan consensus on one thing: America has a moral obligation to the Afghans who helped our soldiers.

Republicans have been especially passionate about this.

“My last memories of Afghanistan were in June 2012,” said Representative Dan Crenshaw, who served in Afghanistan. “I was blind at the time. I had just been blown up, but I could hear. What I could hear were the cries of Rohkman. Rohkman was our interpreter who stepped on the IED right in front of me. He was still alive. He later died. He was the kind of guy who we’re leaving behind, the kind of allies who would sacrifice for our country.”

Seattle area groups asking for volunteers to help arriving Afghan refugees

I don’t think there’s any debate about evacuating allies like that, along with their families. And we may not have evacuated all of them, but we did evacuate tens of thousands. Biden is still hoping the Taliban will release even more. I see there are also private groups planning to liberate whoever they can.

So there are going to be many thousands of refugees headed to this country. And we are about to see how much support they get from the politicians who so passionately wanted them rescued.

At yesterday’s news conference, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was asked by a reporter: “Do you support the Afghan allies who have been evacuated coming to the United States and resettling here?”

“Knowing that they said that they took more than 120,000, with only 5,600 being American, I think we should look through and screen before people come to America,” McCarthy said. “We gotta make sure what’s in there. There was not screening when they were moving people out. That has to take place.”

A reporter asked, “Are you OK with them staying here in the United States?”

McCarthy replied, “After we get the screening, it’s a whole different question.”

That’s what made me wonder if his heart is really in this. I didn’t hear him say we are eager to reward them for their loyalty, or that Massachusetts, Florida, South Carolina, Utah, Iowa – all with Republican governors – have already pledged to welcome refugees. No, for McCarthy, the priority was more vetting.

Maybe that’s because of Trump’s statement on the Afghans, which was pretty mean, even for him, he lumped them in with terrorists.

Whatever the reason, it’s strange to see members of Congress who were passionately demanding we do whatever it took to get our Afghan allies on those planes, suddenly lose that passion once those planes left the ground.

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