UNITED STATES NEWS

Congress honors 13 troops killed during Kabul withdrawal as politics swirl around who is to blame

Sep 9, 2024, 9:03 PM | Updated: Sep 10, 2024, 3:42 am

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, speaks to reporters about his pan...

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, speaks to reporters about his panel's Afghanistan Report and the findings of its three-year investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. He is joined by Republican lawmakers and the families of the military members who were killed by a Taliban bomber during the evacuation. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson is hosting a ceremony Tuesday to posthumously present Congress’ highest honor — the Congressional Gold Medal — to 13 U.S. service members who were killed during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, even as the politics of a presidential election swirl around the event.

Both Democrats and Republicans supported the legislation to honor the 13 U.S. troops, who were killed along with more than 170 Afghans in a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate near Kabul’s Airport in August 2021. President Joe Biden signed the legislation in December 2021. The top Republican and Democratic leaders for both the House and Senate are expected to speak at Tuesday’s ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda.

The event is taking place against the backdrop of a bitter back and forth over who is to blame for the rushed and deadly evacuation from Kabul. Johnson scheduled the ceremony just hours before the first debate between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

House Republicans also released a scathing investigation on Sunday into the withdrawal that cast blame on Biden’s administration and minimized the role of Trump, who had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and Trump ally, praised the House report, which was led by the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Rep. Michael McCaul.

“We must not allow the Biden-Harris Administration to rewrite history,” Johnson said in a statement. “The families of the 13 fallen servicemembers and the allies we abandoned in Afghanistan deserve better.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday criticized the House report as partisan and one-sided, and said it revealed little new information as well as several inaccuracies. He noted that evacuation plans had started well before the pullout and the U.S. did not hand over equipment to the Taliban. He said the fall of Kabul “moved a lot faster than anyone could have anticipated.”

He also acknowledged that during the evacuation “not everything went according to plan. Nothing ever does.”

“We hold ourselves all accountable for that,” he said of the deaths.

Kirby added there would be “quite a few” people from the Department of Defense at the ceremony Tuesday.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, also issued a memorandum in response to the GOP report, saying he was concerned by the “attempts to politicize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

“Republicans’ partisan attempts to garner headlines rather than acknowledge the full facts and substance of their investigation have only increased with the heat of an election season,” Meeks said.

Pentagon reviews have concluded that the suicide bombing was not preventable, and that suggestions troops may have seen the would-be bomber were not true.

Regardless, Trump has thrust the withdrawal, with the backing from some of the families of the Americans killed, into the center of his campaign. Last month, his political team distributed video of him attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the fallen service members at Arlington National Cemetery on the third anniversary of the bombing, despite the cemetery’s prohibition on partisan activity on the grounds as well as an altercation with a cemetery employee who was trying to make sure the campaign followed those rules.

The Gold Star military families who invited him to the Arlington ceremony have defended Trump’s actions. At a fiery news conference outside the Capitol Monday, they implored for the House report to be taken seriously and demanded accountability for those in leadership during evacuation from Kabul.

“President Trump is certainly not perfect. But he’s a far better choice, in my opinion, than the mess that Biden and Harris have created since Kabul,” said Paula Knauss Selph, whose son Ryan Knauss died in the Abbey Gate attack.

While Trump and Republicans have sought to link Harris to the withdrawal as a campaign issue, and Harris has said she was the last person in the room when Biden made his decision, neither watchdog reviews nor the 18-month investigation by House Republicans have identified any instance where the vice president had a significant impact on decision-making.

Still, House Republicans argued that Harris, as well as Biden’s national security team, needed to face accountability for the consequences of the deadly withdrawal.

“Kamala Harris wants to be the president of the United States. She wants to be commander in chief. She needs to answer for this report immediately,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican on the committee.

McCaul, the chairman, also defended the timing of the report by saying that the committee’s investigation had to overcome resistance from the Biden administration.

He cast the investigation as a “truth-seeking mission” rather than a partisan endeavor, but also bragged that out of all the investigations that House Republicans have launched into the Biden administration in the last two years “this investigation is the one they fear the most.”

Most assessments have concluded Trump and Biden share blame for the disastrous end to America’s longest war, which saw enemy Taliban take over Afghanistan again before the last American troops even flew out of the Kabul airport. The main U.S. government watchdog for the war points to Trump’s 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces and military contractors as “the single most important factor” in the collapse of U.S.-allied Afghan security forces and Taliban takeover.

Biden’s April 2021 announcement that he would proceed with the withdrawal set in motion by Trump was the second-biggest factor, the watchdog said.

Both Trump and Biden kept up the staged withdrawal of U.S. forces, and in Trump’s case sharply cut back important U.S. airstrikes in the Taliban, even though the Taliban failed to enter into substantive negotiations with the U.S.-backed civilian government as required by Trump’s withdrawal deal.

___

Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.

Comments

Comment guidelines: No name-calling, personal attacks, profanity, or insults. Please keep the conversation civil and help us moderate comments by reporting abuse.
comments powered by Disqus

United States News

Associated Press

Middle East latest: Israel says 15 trucks carrying aid have been allowed into northern Gaza

Israel says 15 trucks carrying aid have been allowed into northern Gaza, where aid groups have warned that a monthlong Israeli offensive could cause a famine. The trucks entered Gaza on Wednesday with aid from the United Arab Emirates, said the military body handling aid deliveries into the territory, COGAT. It said the aid consisted […]

1 hour ago

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, W...

Associated Press

Liberals pressure Senate Democrats to confirm more Biden judges while they can

WASHINGTON (AP) — Demand Justice, a progressive organization focused on the judiciary, is set to bombard Capitol Hill with a message for the closing weeks of the 118th Congress: Do “whatever it takes” to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominees as a second Donald Trump presidency looms. The Republican president-elect’s victory and the GOP takeover of […]

6 hours ago

Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., meets with reporters after he was elected to succeed longt...

Associated Press

Trump issues early challenge to GOP Senate with defiant nominations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just hours after Republican Sen. John Thune was elected as the incoming Senate majority leader on Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump presented him with one of his first tests — an announcement that he intends to nominate controversial Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general. The Florida Republican is one of the more universally […]

6 hours ago

FILE - Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., arrives before Republican presidential candidate former President ...

Associated Press

Trump’s mainstream picks for top foreign policy posts could reassure allies — and worry China

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is famously unconventional, but he made conventional picks for his two top foreign policy positions. That could be reassuring to American allies, while China and Iran have reasons to be wary. Trump on Wednesday announced his choice of Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Two days earlier, he […]

6 hours ago

Maribel Hidalgo, 23, of Caracas, Venezuela, stands for a portrait with her son, Daniel, 2, outside ...

Associated Press

1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target

NEW YORK (AP) — Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama’s Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States. They were living in the U.S. when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people […]

6 hours ago

FILE - The Capitol is seen in Washington, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Credit: ASSOC...

Associated Press

Republicans win 218 US House seats, giving Donald Trump and the party control of government

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have won enough seats to control the U.S. House, completing the party’s sweep into power and securing their hold on U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump. A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the […]

8 hours ago

Sponsored Articles

...

DISC Desert Institute for Spine Care

The best methods to make your back pain disappear for good

Are you struggling with back pain that will not go away?

...

Day & Night Air Conditioning, Heating and Plumbing

It wouldn’t hurt to get your AC checked after Arizona’s excruciating heat wave

A well-maintained air conditioning unit is vital to living a comfortable life inside, away from triple-digit heat in Arizona.

...

Dr. Shanyn Lancaster, Family & Sports Medicine physician, Midwestern University Comprehensive Care Clinic – Central Phoenix

Exercise is truly your best medicine

“You never slow down, you never grow old”. – Tom Petty

Congress honors 13 troops killed during Kabul withdrawal as politics swirl around who is to blame