to shoot at Americans if they got out by May 1st...I have a few questions about what Joe Biden & Co. had to do from Jan. 20th, on...
>What did they have to do in order to get the SIV process reduced from ~13 months to something close to 8 months (i.e. Aug/Sept)?...May 1st was a pipe dream.
>How many SIVs could they get, and what was the process for getting approval for 'a lot more' of them?...this is a nation of laws, and I have read that Biden needed a supplemental amendment to a Security Bill that involved the Shaheem-Ernst Bill to protect Afghan Allies through the SIV Program...this tells me it's not a "flip the switch" decision to grease the skids for tens of thousands of Afghanis to be released into "U.S. custody"...again, a fine point that Trump either forgot about, or knew about when he pushed for May 1st (or earlier).
>Since Trump did all he could to keep the Afghanis out, how much time has it taken Biden, et al, to arrange for other countries to take on Afghani refugees (not just SIV-qualified people)...again, not an afternoon's worth of phone calls...likely a time consuming negotiation occupying a lot of folks in the State Dept...thousands of refugees are necessarily not SIV qualified, btw...a fact not lost on those taking them in, and a cause for hesitancy (time loss).
>How long did it take to get a 'gutted' State Department (thanks to Trump and his loyalist, Rex Tillerson) to get back to a degree of functionality that allowed for coordinated planning and effective agreements with those countries...recall that there was zero transition assistance.
There's obviously more that bears on the problem...and I'm sure that there have been mistakes by Biden and his team in this chaotic period...but as you've noted, there's no doubt that it's an "All Hands on Deck" effort by them...all we can do is pray they get tens of thousands out...oh, just heard that they're 'mobilizing' commercial airlines to lend a hand...so there's that as well.