President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have said they want to bring back the “warrior” culture to the U.S. Armed Forces.

A key principle of that warrior ethos is to leave no one behind.

But the administration has abandoned 1,600 Afghans who had been vetted and ready to board a plane to the U.S. — part of a promise this country made to the Afghans who served alongside American troops in the longest war the U.S. has fought. As part of his blitz of executive orders, Trump halted the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for at least three months.

The Afghans’ flight was abruptly canceled. Thousands more were still being processed but now are in limbo — some hiding in Afghanistan, others scattered across several countries. And because Trump has also frozen foreign aid, there may not be the resources even to complete those screenings.

Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a volunteer operation dedicated to Afghan resettlement, told me he tried to warn Trump and Vice President JD Vance (himself a Marine Corps veteran) two weeks earlier in a letter, urging an Afghan carve-out. He later hand-carried that letter to House and Senate leaders, incoming and outgoing.

The urgency is driven by a simple fact: The Afghans who helped us, along with their family members, are considered traitors by the ruling Taliban.

“If we don’t get them out and soon, they’re done,” VanDiver said. “They will be hunted down and killed. And they did everything for U.S. troops over there. They kept our servicemen and servicewomen alive. This can’t be our response.”

Trump typically prefers the sledgehammer to the scalpel. His decision to shutter USRAP reflects that mindset. Were the Afghans providing vital assistance to U.S. troops during Trump’s first term just overlooked? Perhaps. But Trump has not rushed to correct it and Hegseth, now in charge of some of the very troops who worked alongside the Afghans, has apparently not asked him to do so.

It was just in December that then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a ceremony at the State Department to honor Afghan allies. In short order, he said, they had become “new friends, new partners, new citizens-to-be,” who had become “an integral part of our communities.”

That mindset is nowhere to be found in the new administration, which appears to have lumped these allies into the greater pool of refugees to be kept out. For not only did Trump shutter USRAP, he also has frozen the aid that sustains the many organizations working to process Afghan refugees abroad and the resettlement funds that should help those here build a new life.

The nearly 20-year slog in Afghanistan ended in August 2021. The ignominious fall of Kabul and abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops stranded hundreds of thousands of Afghans who opposed the Taliban and had sided with the Americans fighting to save their country. Since then, the U.S. has honored its commitment to these Afghan allies — if slowly — bringing a steady stream of them here. But the biometric and biographic vetting that must take place is rigorous and time-consuming.

Some of the 1,600 who should have been on that plane were expected to resettle in Minnesota, which has a substantial refugee population and has already taken in 1,300 Afghans since the war ended.

Nasreen Sajady, executive director at the Afghan Cultural Society in Minneapolis, said in a recent interview that now the evacuees are in limbo, along with the fate of her own program. “How do we keep going?” she asked. “These are federally funded programs. We’re just trying to find hope in all of this mess.”

The aftermath of any war is messy and comes with obligations that extend far past the conflict itself. Veterans come home in need, sometimes, of lifelong care. There is aid to help rebuild the ravaged country. And in the case of the Afghans, a promise made to those who fought alongside our troops.

I first wrote about the plight of the Afghans in February 2024, when a small group of Democratic and Republican senators led by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar worked furiously to attach permanent status for these refugees to an aid bill for Israel and Ukraine. The bill passed, but the amendment that would have helped the refugees failed. That failure left them without the congressional protection that might have prevented Trump’s abandonment.

At the time, Klobuchar said that “Many of these Afghans are highly educated. They were skilled interpreters and intelligence gatherers who can do well here.”

But more importantly, she said, “We gave our word. It’s just wrong not to keep our promises. We don’t want to be the country that turns our back on people who stand with us, that says you can come, but there’s a trap door under you.”

Hegseth, whose platoon leader days are not so long ago, should know from experience how vital the assistance of locals on the ground can be. He should not want one of the first acts on his watch to be a broken promise that would telegraph to the world that in future conflicts, locals should think twice before aiding US troops and risking exposure.

That would be a poor start to America’s new “Golden Age.”

____

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. She is a former member of the editorial board at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she also worked as a senior political editor and reporter.

_____

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.