Thirty years ago, then-Sen. Joe Biden co-sponsored a resolution proclaiming Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg to be an honorary citizen of the United States.
Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who, while serving in Budapest during World War II, both issued Swedish passports to Hungarian Jews hunted by the Nazis and sheltered them in Swedish diplomatic property. Among those whom he saved was a young Tom Lantos, who would immigrate to America and rise to become chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Wallenberg’s tail, of course, ends in tragedy: After the Soviets invaded Hungary, they arrested Wallenberg, took him to Moscow, and ultimately executed him.
Wallenberg may be the most famous, but he was not the only diplomat to do the right thing. Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz Weg rescued thousands in a similar way. Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes saved thousands with visas, as did Republican Chinese diplomat Ho Feng-Shan.
How sad it is to compare such heroism with the incompetence and cynicism on display in recent days.
Answering questions after his Aug. 26 speech, Biden seemed to dismiss the moral imperative to extract those Afghans who most helped America. “I know of no conflict, as a student of history — no conflict where, when a war was ending, one side was able to guarantee that everyone that wanted to be extracted from that country would get out,” he explained. Vice President Kamala Harris laughed when asked about the chaos at the Kabul airport. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has consistently sought to deflect blame: to the Afghan army for collapsing after the U.S. pulled the carpet out from beneath them and to the Trump administration for failing to process visas faster.
But it was Ross Wilson, the acting ambassador who enabled Islamism in Turkey and whom Blinken kept on in Kabul, who never bothered to restart visa interviews even though he might easily have allowed consular officers to receive paperwork at the embassy gates and then conduct interviews via video.
Blinken should not scapegoat Wilson, however. It was Blinken who ignored the 1991 precedent in which U.S. officials evacuated Iraqis to Guam for visa processing against the backdrop of Saddam Hussein’s resurgence after George H.W. Bush pulled out troops. Blinken seeks moral authority from his late stepfather’s Holocaust experience, but the speech he made about it shortly after the election now seems like a cynical ploy. Former President Donald Trump’s top aides resigned when they could no longer tolerate the president’s actions. That top Biden administration officials refuse to do so suggests they are complicit or without shame.
German industrialist Oskar Schindler made a list of Jews to save. U.S. officials in Kabul instead provided the names of America’s closest Afghan allies to the Taliban, essentially creating a kill list. Sometimes, the line between incompetence and malevolence can be hard to define. That the U.S. allowed biometric data to fall into enemy hands means Taliban officials need only confirm a fingerprint before ordering an execution.
The buck should stop with Biden. As a senator, he was an opportunist. He praised Wallenberg but clearly never understood why. While Wallenberg is a lionized figure in history, Biden will go down in history as the anti-Wallenberg — a man when faced with a moral choice turned his back on those could save.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
