(Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump on Monday commemorated the third anniversary of the Afghanistan suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members while highlighting one of the greatest foreign-policy disasters of the Biden–Harris administration.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery in honor of three of the slain service members—Sgt. Nicole Gee, Staff Sgt. Darin Hoover and Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss.
Later in the day, he went to Michigan to address the National Guard Association of the United States conference, where he received the endorsement of another high-profile ex-Democrat, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, on the heels of his endorsement last week by political scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
BREAKING: The entire crowd at the National Guard Association meeting in Detroit just ERUPTED in cheers for Tulsi Gabbard as she walked on stage to formally endorse President Donald Trump
THIS IS MASSIVE!!
First, RFK Jr., and now Tulsi is joining team Trump?
We live in… pic.twitter.com/AqvrK6MNtO
— George (@BehizyTweets) August 26, 2024
Separately, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced that Congress would posthumously honor the 13 service members next month by presenting their families with the Congressional Gold Medal—the highest civilian award that Congress can bestow.
Monday marked three years since the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, which killed the American service members and more than 100 Afghans. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Trump called the withdrawal “the most EMBARRASSING moment in the history of our Country” on his Truth Social site Monday.
“Gross Incompetence – 13 DEAD American soldiers, hundreds of people wounded and dead,” he wrote. “You don’t take our soldiers out first, you take them out LAST, when all else is successfully done,” he said in the post.
Trump’s campaign has specifically highlighted Vice President Kamala Harris’s statements that she was the last person in the room before President Joe Biden made the decision on Afghanistan.
“She bragged that she would be the last person in the room, and she was,” the former president said last week in a North Carolina rally.
“She was the last person in the room with Biden when the two of them decided to pull the troops out of Afghanistan,” he added. “She had the final vote. She had the final say, and she was all for it.”
Kamala was the last one in the room before the disastrous and deadly Afghanistan withdrawal. pic.twitter.com/E8iVo7hh0u
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 23, 2024
Harris had no plans to commemorate the anniversary, but she issued a statement claiming she mourned the 13 U.S. service members who were killed.
“My prayers are with their families and loved ones. My heart breaks for their pain and their loss,” she said.
Biden drew sharp criticism following the fiasco—not only for the poor planning and partisan motives that prompted an overly hasty evacuation, allowing the Taliban to regain power after more than two decades of U.S. nationbuilding in the country, but also for his apparent disinterest in the lives lost.
At the ceremony receiving the caskets, Biden was seen checking his watch, and in meetings with the Gold Star families of the lost servicemembers, he was slammed for bringing up the stolen valor of his eldest son, Beau, who briefly served oversees in Iraq as a military lawyer before dying of cancer several years later.
The relatives of some of the American service members who were killed appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention last month, saying Biden—who was at the beach this week—had never publicly named their loved ones.
“Joe Biden has refused to recognize their sacrifice,” Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Sgt. Gee, told the crowd. “Donald Trump knew all of our children’s names. He knew all of their stories.”
Biden said the 13 Americans who died were “patriots in the highest sense” who “embodied the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless” in a statement on Monday.
“Ever since I became Vice President, I carried a card with me every day that listed the exact number of American service members who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—including Taylor, Johanny, Nicole, Hunter, Daegan, Humberto, David, Jared, Rylee, Dylan, Kareem, Maxton, and Ryan.”
In his disasterous debate against Trump in June, Biden bizarrely claimed that no U.S. troops had died overseas on his watch.
Harris has sought to distance herself from many of the Biden administration’s failures, framing her campaign as one of “hope and change.”
However, in her own statement she offered a robust defense of the failed withdrawal.
“As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war,” she said.
“Over the past three years, our Administration has demonstrated we can still eliminate terrorists, including the leaders of al-Qaeda and ISIS, without troops deployed into combat zones,” she added. “I will never hesitate to take whatever action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people.”
Under Trump, the United States signed a peace agreement with the Taliban that was aimed at ending America’s longest war and bringing U.S. troops home.
However, as Rep. Wesley Hunt confirmed in July, Trump’s peace accord was conditional upon the Taliban upholding its end of the bargain—and included a strong disincentive for the radical Islamic sect’s leaders to take advantage of America’s goodwill.
Congressman Wesley Hunt says in a tense meeting with Taliban leaders, Trump declared, “If you harm a hair on a single American, I’m going to kill you,” Trump then “pulled out a satellite photo of the leader of the Taliban’s home, handed it to him, got up and walked out the room.”… pic.twitter.com/vU8FXg2TBx
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) July 3, 2024
Nonetheless, Biden later pointed to that agreement as he sought to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan, claiming it bound him to withdraw troops and set the stage for the chaos that engulfed the country.
A Biden administration review of the withdrawal acknowledged that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner, but attributed the delays to the Afghan government and military, and to U.S. military and intelligence community assessments. No Pentagon officials were ever held accountable for the failures.
The top two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation said the administration inadequately planned for the withdrawal. The nation’s top-ranking military officer at the time, then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers earlier this year he had urged Biden to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces to give backup. Instead, Biden decided to keep a much smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the U.S. embassy.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
