The shame of America： Biden's abomination in Afghanistan lives on
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Summary
On August 17th, 2011, Jason Jones stepped up to the plate and did something that no one else would dare to do: rescue a woman trapped in the Taliban's clutches in Afghanistan. In the process, he became a hero. And now, a year later, we re celebrating the anniversary of that day.
Transcript
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Thanks to LifeFunder, we were able to keep 30,000 people alive through the winter with
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their only source of food and heat was the Vulnerable People Project.
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And these were Christians and other minorities that were extremely vulnerable.
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If Biden would have said in early July that it's not looking good and we need all American
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citizens to get out of the country now, how many lives, how many American lives would
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Anybody who was at the LifeSite Gala on August 17th would remember one of the stars of the
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And the reason why is very special because, do you remember, it was a year ago now that
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the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving allies and even U.S. citizens in lurch, unable
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to get out, scared for their lives and rightfully so.
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And he did so with the help of so many of you fans of LifeSite News because we ran something
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You know that we have this platform, this GoFundMe alternative called LifeFunder that
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Well, I think originally Jason thought it might be a little bit of a help, but you guys came
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Jason's still doing this work and we need to help him some more.
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So at LifeFunder.com, you can help at LifeFunder.com slash extra mile.
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You can still help to help Jason Jones in this effort.
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What an awesome thing you did for us at the gala.
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There are people raving about it all over the place.
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But before we get into all of that, let's begin as we always do with the sign of the
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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
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But boy, to finally get to embrace you after more than two and a half years of being away,
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I did send John Candy and a crew to go try to stop you, but somehow you evaded them.
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We're experiencing an anniversary right now, not a good anniversary, but an anniversary
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of something that launched you into almost like a new life.
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Tell us what happened and what we're remembering right now.
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And it's a privilege to be able to talk to your folks because it was LifeSite News,
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LifeFunder, and your donors that really stepped up.
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In early August of last year, in this very office, my home office, you can see behind
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me, I was battling with COVID pneumonia, laying on my couch, and I got a phone message from
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a friend of mine who was actually an actress, Jennifer Cadena, who's the co-founder of Movie
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And she had asked if I could help rescue her friend's mother-in-law.
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Her friend and her husband, her friend's husband, made an anti-Taliban documentary.
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So as they saw Afghanistan beginning to fall, and as the Taliban was getting closer and closer
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to Kabul, she asked if I could help rescue her friend's mother.
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And so I set out to try to find a path out for my friend's mom.
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And but by the end of that first day, in early August of last year, I had about 12 more phone
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calls, a Marine captain, some Christian pastors, and others.
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And so I just tried to build out a plan, leveraging my relationships in the U.S.
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government and for some and in other large nonprofits to find seats on planes for these
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But by the end of the first week, word had spread that I was successfully getting folks
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And just me on this couch behind me in this laptop, I'd fielded over a thousand requests
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from pastors, from Army Green Berets, from Marines, folks just trying to get out their
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interpreters or Christian leaders and their families and others.
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And it really began to become what I thought was going to be a very simple project of not
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simple, but a small, just a project of getting out a few friends or friends of a few friends.
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It blew up into really what became a new full time part, you know, mission for my organization
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What we do traditionally, as you know, is we run influence campaigns to defend the vulnerable
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from genocide, war, defending the child in the womb.
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We run influence campaigns using celebrities or politicians or media, getting legislation
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introduced, trying to form policy, but sort of doing direct evacuations from a country that's
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But why I am so grateful to talk to your audience is somebody from your team contacts
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I was, they were like, hey, we're putting together a life funder for you.
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And I felt like the last thing I needed right now was a chore.
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I had all the tasks in the world in front of me.
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And I thought, oh, this could maybe raise us a couple of thousand dollars and this will
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But as Afghanistan continued to collapse and I was focused on building out overland routes
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to get Christian leaders and their families and others out of Afghanistan as the airport
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became inaccessible and then eventually closed.
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In just a matter of a few weeks, I didn't even look over at the life funder.
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And it raised over a half of a million dollars.
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And what this allowed us to do is when a lot of these large groups that got a lot of
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We were being very quiet about what we were doing.
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And we were building overland routes into all of the neighboring countries just to keep
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people alive and get them out as soon as possible.
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A lot of interpreters were captured, beheaded, hung.
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A lot of people on our list before we could evacuate them were murdered.
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But what had happened is thanks to LifeFunder, we were leveraging our relationships with big
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organizations and with government agencies and getting our folks onto other people's planes.
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But what LifeFunder allowed us to do now was to really build an underground railroad.
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And as winter approached and the railroad was sort of our routes were becoming very dangerous
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and very expensive, we decided to cease evacuations to the winter and to begin to feed these Christian
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These minority communities like the Hazara were having food directed away from them.
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The UN had predicted over a million deaths last winter.
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But thanks to LifeFunder, we were able to keep 30,000 people alive through the winter with it.
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Their only source of food and heat was the Vulnerable People Project.
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And these were Christians and other minorities that were extremely vulnerable.
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This also included American citizens that were in hiding.
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We were able to get the last American citizens on our list out shortly before Christmas.
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The funds to do that had also come from LifeFunder.
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And so 100% of the funds that came in from LifeFunder went directly to mission.
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We were locally sourcing our food from neighboring countries.
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We were partnering with Afghan anti-Taliban tribes and communities to facilitate our evacuations
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So our little organization together with LifeFunder, we probably distributed more food than the World
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And as far as we can see, we're really the only organization that never had our evacuation
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If there was an SIV, and that's an Afghan who was vulnerable because they fought alongside
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the United States, so their special immigrant visa qualified.
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When we had SIVs that were in imminent danger, at no point were we ever not able to evacuate
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There were months where we completely bankrupted our organization.
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You know, a lot of these big groups with lots of funds.
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They thought we had tens of millions of dollars because they saw the impact that we had on
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But it was because we're a very lean organization.
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All of our work in Afghanistan was facilitated by Afghan partners.
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All this funds was raised really by the grace of LifeSite News, LifeFunder, and your donors.
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We're very, very proud to have helped you do what you do.
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Tell us what you're doing now and what the needs are now.
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You know, I was thinking what our Lord told us is if someone compels you to go a mile with
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them, and I really love that the word is compelled.
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Someone compels you, not asks you, not suggests, not cajoles, compels you to go a mile with them.
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The Vulnerable People Project felt compelled to rescue people who were made vulnerable because
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of they were my co-religionists, they were fellow Christians, or because they fought shoulder
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to shoulder with Americans in the war on terror.
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I felt that I had no choice, that I had to do all I could to rescue them in the fact that
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We thought it would be simple, get them across the border, and then we were done.
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But of course, to be a Christian in Pakistan isn't much better than being a Christian in
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We have to find countries to permanently resettle them.
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So we're calling phase two this year, extra mile.
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We felt compelled to go one mile last year, and we're going to go the extra mile.
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One of the things that I personally said to every Afghan that contacted our organization,
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whether it be a Christian, a Hazara, or an SIV who was made vulnerable for their service
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to the United States, I told them that they were going to be okay and that we would be
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And I said that because that's what I learned in the Army.
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As an infantryman, when you come across a wounded soldier, a wounded buddy, a cohort, you
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put your hand on their shoulders, you comfort them, and you tell them they're going to be
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And we were telling this to people, John Henry, as I'm talking to them, people around them
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And we're telling them they're going to be okay.
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And I'm glad I said that because I feel like that was a contract.
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I'm now obligated to be with them until they are safe.
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It's very expensive to resettle one immigrant because the United States is not keeping its
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In fact, our diplomatic liaison, we're opening up an office in Rome because we found that
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countries in Europe have been better partners in resettling these Afghans who are made vulnerable
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by their service to the United States or because they're Christians than our government
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But it's $50,000 over 18 months to resettle a refugee.
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We have hundreds of SIVs in safe houses across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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And as you can imagine, it's very challenging for them.
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And mentally and emotionally and spiritually, it's becoming very hard for them after now a
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And then we have the brutal winter that's going to be bearing down upon us with food shortages
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And those Afghan Christians and Hazaras are looking at famine.
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Right now, this summer, already in the summer, 50% of Afghanistan is facing severe hunger.
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So we're anticipating millions of Afghans dying this winter.
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One of the things that we discovered, we built this ship at sea.
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We discovered that not only do we have to rescue those SIVs, those Afghan soldiers who fought
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shoulder to shoulder with our men and women in uniform, but that there are a million orphans
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So many of the families we're supporting in Afghanistan were orphaned because the fathers
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and husbands, so many widows and orphans in Afghanistan right now because of the way we left
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So many of the police officers and the Afghan police officers and soldiers were captured
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And now their children and their wives are starving to death.
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And last year, as this was all unfolding, one Bible verse kept ringing in my head,
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And I just thought that these were our friends.
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These were the friends that fought the worst terrorists in the world with us.
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And, you know, as a former infantryman, the Ranger Creed, my favorite stanza is never will
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I leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.
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And under no circumstances will I embarrass my country.
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Well, last year, Joe Biden embarrassed our country.
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And now their children and their wives are starving to death.
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And it wasn't an abandonment that was what might have been pre-planned.
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But he swore up and down, did he not, that he wouldn't do that.
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In fact, we're going to play a couple of those clips right now.
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This is Joe Biden promising to do the right thing.
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Mr. President, do you trust the Taliban, Mr. President?
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Is the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
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Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.
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Can you please clarify what they have told you about whether that will happen or not?
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If I can just get you to comment on that, because those were promises made and obviously promises
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Because the first time he went on television and said, Afghanistan will not fall to the Taliban.
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You know, and then within five weeks of those statements, there were helicopters on roofs and
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When Biden said that the first time in July 7th, 85% of Afghanistan's districts had already
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I have talked to special forces soldiers who told me that in July, they were already doing
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joint patrols with the Taliban and handing the country over.
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This is what I was told by special forces soldiers, active duty Green Berets.
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And so they knew in July, the game was over, that Afghanistan was going to be handed over
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So when Biden said that, you know, the problem is not only that we didn't get American citizens
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I mean, I'm sure there are still American citizens there in hiding.
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There were hundreds to thousands of U.S. citizens there.
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We had Americans on our list until Christmas, around Christmastime, in country, in hiding.
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In August, there were family members asking us to rescue their family.
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And their family would tell us, American citizens would tell us, Biden said Afghanistan is not
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Within days of those calls, many of the people we lost, we can never communicate with again.
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So if Biden would have said in early July that it's not looking good and we need all American
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citizens to get out of the country now, how many lives, how many American lives would
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Our Afghan ground director who runs our ground operations, Prince Wafa, was an American citizen
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who didn't get home from Afghanistan until in December.
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Prince Wafa had to sneak into the country to rescue his own wife because the State Department
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She couldn't even get in a meeting at the embassy.
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Prince Wafa snuck into the country on August 15th.
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He grew out his beard, snuck in the country, went to get his wife, ended up being stuck
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there, saw me on EWTN News Nightly, reached out to me, and then our organization was able
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to partner with him to facilitate his evacuation and get him back to the United States with
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So when Biden lied, what he did is he let steam out of the kettle.
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So a lot of Americans and a lot of the SIVs didn't recognize how important it was that
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So on August 26th of last year, a bomb blast went off at Abbey Gate that killed 13 Americans,
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12 Marines, and one Navy corpsman, and also 170 Afghans killed and countless wounded.
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We know John Henry now about the bomb at Abbey Gate.
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I was really hesitant to tell this something, but I've been saying it.
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I just thought it wasn't prudent for me to share this with the media.
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I was told on August 25th to get everyone away from the Abbey Gate, there was a terrorist
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And so we were able to get some folks away from that gate, including an interpreter with
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his pregnant wife and their three-year-old child, hours before the bomb blast went off.
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Well, I always wondered how our friends had this information about Abbey Gate.
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The CIA had told the Marines to watch this terrorist, said that there was this terrorist,
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And for 72 hours at least before the bomb went off, they had eyes on this guy.
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So the CIA was aware of the terrorist that ended up detonating the bomb, and they killed
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You couldn't imagine a withdrawal from a country that was more disgraceful, more thoughtless to
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the lives of U.S. servicemen and women, more thoughtless to the sacrifice made by countless
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Americans over the past 20 years, not to mention the treasure, not only the blood, but the treasure
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that the American people poured into that country, the trust that the Afghans placed in us.
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You cannot think of a more disgraceful exit than what happened on August 30th of 2021.
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And I think it was the most shameful day in history.
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Of course, it's better that an injustice be done to you than you inflict an injustice on others.
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And 9-11, Pearl Harbor, we had an injustice inflicted on us.
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But the U.S. government, the Biden administration, not only inflicted an injustice on the people
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of Afghanistan, all those veterans who sacrificed years of their lives and many gave the ultimate
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sacrifice, all of that was just spit on by the Biden administration.
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And then now countless Christians and friends and allies of ours are living in hiding, and
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Just a quick note before we return, if you would like to stay up to date on LifeSite's
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coverage of the latest life, family, and culture news, subscribe to one of our many newsletters
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And if you'd like to help us bring our truth-telling coverage to millions around the world, please
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consider making a one-time or monthly donation at give.lifesitenews.com.
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I'd love you to just recount, if you could, one story, one that touches your heart and
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one that you've seen the fulfillment of with one of the families or people that you've rescued.
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So one story is, I was in my home office here in Texas, and a young Afghan woman was released
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from a refugee camp because her pregnancy was so problematic that the doctors at the camp
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And they just let this young couple into America out.
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And they went to Austin because they had Afghan relatives there.
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And this woman had a very serious problem pregnancy.
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And I'm imagining she probably didn't know what she was going to do with this pregnancy.
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And she ended up at a pregnancy center, pro-life counseling, pregnancy counseling center.
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And the director of the pregnancy center saw me either on LifeSite News or EWTN.
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And she reached out to me, thinking I lived in Hawaii, not knowing I lived just an hour away,
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She is despairing and depressed and broken and doesn't even want to live anymore because
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her one-year-old child was separated from her and her husband when the bomb blast went
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She had been with her mother, her husband, and the mother was holding the baby.
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And when the bomb went off and the crowds got pushed in different ways, grandma and baby
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And mommy, the mom and dad, were pulled into the airport by military police.
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And they were literally pulled onto the airport and huddled on a plane to land in the United
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States, hoping that their grandma and baby made it as well, but didn't.
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By this point, they were in communication with grandma.
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They didn't have heat and they didn't have money for fuel, for coal or kerosene or for
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And I was able to jump in my car, go to Austin, meet with the pregnancy center director and
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And not only was the Vulnerable People Project able to pay for their housing and give them
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a food allowance here in the United States, within hours of meeting the couple, we had four
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months of food, baby formula, coal, kerosene, and baby wipes, everything grandma would need
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And we were able to, in the past eight weeks, after a very long, hard struggle, able to get
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the baby brought out of Afghanistan to the United States, on the way to the United States.
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And what I love about this story is it's really the pro-life movement working together.
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You have a pro-life pregnancy center in Austin, caring for the vulnerable women of Austin.
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And here, an Afghan refugee walks through the door.
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She sees me on Catholic television or LifeSite News and reaches out to me.
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And then together, thanks to LifeSite News, EWTN, this pregnancy center, and my organization,
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And the baby was eventually reunited with his family here in the United States.
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And to me, that is what the Catholic Apostolate, to me, is best summarized by the Pieta, where
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Our Lady has the second person of the Trinity resting dead across her lap, Jesus Christ.
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And what we are to do is to be with our Lord at the cross.
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And the best way to do that is to serve the most vulnerable people in the world.
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And of course, the child in the womb is extremely vulnerable.
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And this young Afghan woman's child in the womb was vulnerable.
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And together, these Catholic apostolates and a pro-life apostolate came together to care
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for them across the globe, really, to me, is one of my favorite stories.
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And another one that I'll keep it in our tribe is Sister Deirdre Byrne, who I did not know,
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and she gave, but I knew her from that wonder, I didn't know her personally, she gave that
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wonderful opening prayer to Trump's convention last 2020, where she said, I'm not only pro-life,
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Well, Congressman Chris Smith's office told her she had some doctors that she served with,
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because she's also a surgeon and retired officer in the Army.
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She had to get some of her former surgeons that she served with out of Afghanistan.
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And Congressman Chris Smith put her in touch with our organization.
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And we were able to bring them food and coal and move them to a safe house immediately.
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And within three weeks of first contact, we were able to evacuate them out of the country.
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And again, there we have Sister Byrne, Deirdre Byrne's thanks, and thanks to LifeSite News
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and LifeFunder, we were able to save these 13 doctors' lives.
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We rescued a girl who was, her mother died and her stepfather sold her as a Taliban bride.
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We were able to literally snatch her from the Taliban and to get her to safety.
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So many pastors, so many Christian families were involved in rescuing a Catholic religious order,
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But John Henry, thanks to LifeSite News and LifeFunder, this happened.
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Most organizations have left, and when these organizations leave, they hand to us their
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And so for us, every month, we have more and more people piled on to our organization's
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We're rescuing people, resettling people, but as more and more organizations close up shop,
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we have more and more responsibilities every month.
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And John Henry, we will be with our Afghan allies.
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We will be with the Christians of Afghanistan until they are safe.
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And if that means that this Afghan relief program is something that VPP will have to build out
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So many of them are losing hope and they're despairing.
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But I just, and I know they listen to these programs I'm on, and I just want them to know
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My team works all day, every day to ensure their safety.
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There are so many organizations right now that have lost the faith.
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And your funding of those organizations has to stop.
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But there are actually really good organizations to fund.
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And Jason Jones's Vulnerable People Project is, as you can hear, doing incredible, life-saving work.
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Go to lifefunder.com slash extra mile and please donate generously.
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And to see more like this, be sure to hit the subscribe button below to get all the latest
00:28:35.060
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