We must save our Afghan allies

President Joe Biden has promised that under his guidance the United States would again be a leader, trusted by other nations and peoples to side with its friends, keep its word and exemplify its values.

Yet we are now shattering the promises we made to those in Afghanistan who helped us pursue our mission there for two decades, to keep them safe while we remained, and help them leave if we retreated. In so doing, this nation is exhibiting a deadly, disingenuous lack of honor.

Whatever action is necessary to stymie the Taliban long enough to extract allies who worked with us and against the Taliban must be done. That includes support staff who endangered themselves and their families to aid our mission. It includes those who worked alongside our military in nongovernmental organizations, as well as human rights and women's rights activists and Afghan journalists. In his speech Monday, Biden listed steps being taken to get them out and glossed over the obvious fact that those efforts, so far, have been grossly inadequate.

We must deploy enough troops to get our allies to the airport safely, then out of the country. We must create a safe spot where they can start new lives. Biden told the Taliban that if they disrupt this rescue, we will return their violence, redoubled. He must back up that threat.

The necessity of saving our allies from the Taliban, which can be done, is a challenge separate from saving the nation from the Taliban, which seemingly cannot. These violent fundamentalist extremists ruled the nation before we invaded to stomp out al-Qaida and kill Osama bin Laden. Biden's address focused too much on attacking a vision of a continued military commitment few in this nation support. We no longer can spill the blood of our servicemen and women. After four presidents and trillions of dollars spent since the invasion, our combat role is over. The United States trained and armed a native force of 300,000 troops, leaving the nation with far more resources than the Taliban. They caved in two weeks.

In doing so, they showed that no amount of support was going to give these Afghan troops the motivation and dedication to face the Taliban on their own, not least because the government they were asked to defend was corrupt and incompetent. Our government lied to us for years that this strategy was working.

Our values also demand that we try to provide the humanitarian aid necessary for Afghans to survive in the short term, and the broader help that could bring freedom and prosperity someday. Success, though, requires a populace that can receive and utilize that aid.

But while helping Afghanistan is an honorable ambition, helping those who actively allied with us is a responsibility.

The United States cannot shirk such a duty.