Bromund: When we leave, friends suffer first

The American military does a lot of things well, but it can't do everything. Around the world we rely on locals to help us, often in dangerous conditions. We owe these friends a debt of honor. In Afghanistan, the time has come to pay that debt.

Congress has allocated 8,750 special immigrant visas to the Afghans who have worked with U.S. forces as interpreters. But so far, in four years, fewer than 1,700 visas have been awarded. And the grounds for our refusals beggar belief.

U.S. authorities in Kabul now tell the interpreters that our promise is void because they face no "serious threat" if they remain in Afghanistan. I wish officials making that decision had to spend a few days walking around without a U.S. soldier at their side in Afghanistan.

As one despairing interpreter put it to a Washington Post reporter, "Do they need someone to bring in my decapitated head?" Death letters and lists from the Taliban make it all too clear that our friends in Afghanistan are marked men. As are their families.

And it's not just the interpreters: more than half a million Afghans have fled their homes -- fled the Taliban -- since late August, and 38,000 sought asylum abroad last year. We can't, or won't, help these people. But the least we can do is help the ones who helped us.

My bottom line on U.S. foreign policy is to keep faith with our friends. Once we make a promise, we uphold it. Now, if a friend breaks faith with us, the deal is off. We're called upon to be true to our word, not to be suckers.

But others usually need us now more than we need them. For them, America is life or death today. We can break our word without immediate consequences. Except for a bad conscience, we may not see the tangible results for years.

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This is partly a matter of our honor as a nation. We're inclined not to pay much attention to questions of national honor today, but they matter. Honor is fundamentally about our willingness to uphold our own deeply felt convictions. But it's also about our interests. When we break promises to our friends, they suffer and everyone notices.

We have quit before. In the 1960s, the U.S. made an enormous commitment to Southeast Asia. We were the bulwark of regional governments that wanted to resist Communism. And when we quit, our friends paid the price.

One particular price is memorable. In 1975, as the Communist Khmer Rouge was about to take Cambodia, the U.S. offered a number of Cambodians a chance to get out alive. One of them, the former Prime Minister Sirik Matak, wrote a short, devastating reply to the U.S. ambassador.

You can find Matak's letter online. He refused to leave "in such a cowardly fashion," and denounced the U.S. for "abandoning a people which has chosen liberty." The letter closed, heart-breakingly, with "I have only committed this mistake of believing in you."

After the Khmer Rouge took over, Matak was shot. He took three days to die from his wounds.

I can't read Matak's letter without the terrible sense that we will relive that history in Afghanistan. There are few secrets there about who has helped the Americans, and while our troops have body armor and families safe at home, our friends are naked. If they cannot get out, they are dead.

Why is the Barack Obama administration refusing to grant the visas? Because if it can pretend that Afghanistan is safe, we are free to leave in 2014. But it is not safe, and while the much-reported basing deal is a step in the right direction, our Special Forces won't protect interpreters, or the Afghans who are fleeing the Taliban today.

In 1975, we at least had the honor to offer Matak a way out, even if he was too principled to take it. Today, we don't even have the honor to keep our promises. That kind of betrayal has costs. The first to pay will be our friends. But in ways and at a time we can't fathom now, we'll pay too.

Ted R. Bromund is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Thatcher Center for Freedom.