Brett Brown is a former U.S. diplomat, who served on the front lines of crises from Africa to the Middle East, and served as the Obama administration’s Director of Global Engagement at the White House
President Joe Biden must send US troops back to Sudan and save the Americans he left behind — and he must do it today.
Right now, Africa’s third-largest country teeters on the brink of bloody chaos.
On Tuesday, fresh fighting tested a tenuous three-day truce brokered by the US between two heavily armed groups led by rival Sudanese generals.
Hundreds have been killed and there is no telling if this latest ceasefire will last.
Over the weekend, the US military bravely evacuated our diplomats from the US embassy in Khartoum.
As a former diplomat, I am incredibly proud of our armed forces. Yet I was shocked to learn that thousands of our fellow citizens did not make it.
They were abandoned by their governments, while many smaller countries, such as Spain and Saudi Arabia, were able to get their citizens to safety.
It is a bitter irony that today, as Biden announces his bid to once again represent some 330 million Americans as president, some 16,000 are stranded in this troubled East African nation.
Instead of being rescued, Americans are being advised to undertake a treacherous journey across an 500-mile (800 km) battlefield to Port Sudan alone.
It is unrealistic, dangerous and deeply irresponsible.
This is not the way the United States behaved when I served abroad.
In 2004 I accompanied extraction teams during the civil war in Ivory Coast. We took convoys into crowds of angry protesters to get Americans and our Canadian counterparts to safety.
President Joe Biden must send US troops back to Sudan and save the Americans he left behind — and he must do it today.
On Tuesday, fresh fighting tested a tenuous three-day truce brokered by the US between two heavily armed groups led by rival Sudanese generals. (Above) Sudanese army soldiers near the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, on April 20, 2023
I was on the National Security Council of the Obama administration when civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013. From the White House Situation Room, we watched as US Marines landed helicopters in the middle of a war zone.
President Obama also supported mass evacuation operations in Libya after the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
And in my early years as a Foreign Service officer, there were famous rescues from Haiti, Lebanon, and Liberia.
We took risks – unlike today.
The abandonment of Americans in Sudan is part of a problematic pattern from the Biden White House.
In August 2021, the president rushed through a reckless retreat in Kabul, Afghanistan, leaving hundreds of American citizens vulnerable to a vengeful Taliban.
The president closed our embassy in Kiev, Ukraine ahead of the 2022 Russian invasion, and also cut off any direct aid that could have been provided to Americans caught up in that conflict.
In both cases, Biden shut down modern embassies specifically designed to withstand direct attacks.
So why should we choose to withdraw abruptly before more effort was made to save others?
The short answer is political.
This was also the case during the Trump administration, which chose to casually leave our embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, while many Americans desperately tried to escape the increasingly violent and repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro.
Trump similarly closed our consulate in Basra, Iraq, despite the objections of our consul general there at the time.
It is now clear that there is a much lower risk tolerance in Washington, DC after the deadly breach of our consulate in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.
In Sudan, Biden’s team didn’t even make the slightest effort to get other Americans out with our diplomats.
I was shocked to learn that thousands of our fellow citizens did not make it. They were abandoned by their governments, while many smaller countries, such as Spain and Saudi Arabia, were able to get their citizens to safety. (Above) Citizens of Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Germany evacuated from Sudan in Amman, Jordan on April 24, 2023
Over the weekend, the US military bravely evacuated our diplomats from the US embassy in Khartoum. (Above) Secretary of State Antony Blinken follows the operation to evacuate the US Embassy in Khartoum on April 22, 2023
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to suggest that Americans had no obligation to their fellow citizens as the State Department warned people not to travel to Sudan.
“It is not our standard procedure to evacuate US citizens living abroad,” she said.
But that designation applies to many countries, and it has never meant that Americans are left to fend for themselves in the face of danger.
If this is true, we will see fewer people venturing into regions where humanitarian aid is most needed.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was particularly annoying. He spoke as someone who has never faced the life and death choices you face in these places.
The US “will make every effort to support and facilitate the departure of those who remain in the country,” he said.
It was pretty much the same message we heard when the last C-17 transport plane took off from Kabul International Airport. Biden and his team have too often relied on distant diplomacy to deal with difficult global crises.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (above) was particularly irritating. He spoke as someone who has never faced the life and death choices you face in these places.
From India to Mexico, from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela, from China to the latest leak of classified documents, their response has been largely hands-on and unaccountable.
But when it comes to our fellow citizens, this simply cannot stand.
It’s time for this administration to be finally and determined to never leave any more Americans behind.