At its summer meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Aug. 10-14, the Republican National Committee will debate, and most likely pass, a resolution calling for the rescue of the 17,000-20,000 Afghanis who served as interpreters for U.S. troops during the 20-year American military presence in that country.
"It’s really a matter of life and death," said Hawaii Republican National Committeeman Gene Ward, author of the resolution.
He noted that a takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban would almost certainly spell death for any Afghani who assisted the U.S. since its attack following 9/11 in 2001.
Ward told Newsmax he intends to bring up his measure calling for the U.S. to expedite the evacuation of the Afghani interpreters before the RNC Resolutions Committee at its meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
A Vietnam veteran who interpreted Vietnamese for U.S. servicemen, Ward recalled that "before the fall of Saigon in 1975, we evacuated 110,000 Vietnamese to Guam who might otherwise have been executed for assisting the U.S. effort. So this kind of evacuation can be done.
"If we don’t act," warned Ward, "genocide will follow."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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