At the Republican National Convention, a poignant moment unfolded as Gold Star families, representing U.S. service members killed in the August 2021 terrorist attack at Kabul’s airport, brazenly accused President Joe Biden of neglecting to utter their names. The attack, an atrocious suicide bombing, took place during the final stages of the U.S. military’s controversial withdrawal from Afghanistan following the Taliban’s governmental takeover.
In the dreadful bombing on August 26, 2021, situated outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, the lives of 13 U.S. service members and around 170 Afghan civilians were brutally cut short. The Islamic State Khorasan terror group, also known as ISIS-K, took it upon themselves to claim responsibility for the attack, conveniently coinciding with the evacuation of American associates from the country.
Moving out of the scene of carnage and into Biden’s responses and actions post the calamity, it was noted that the President chose to publicly display his grief over the deaths. As part of this effort, an entourage consisting of the President, first lady Jill Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarked on a trip to Dover Air Force Base to receive the remains of the fallen.
Despite its orchestrated show of respect, the RNC video bearing witness to this solemn event accused Biden of succumbing to boredom, as evidenced by him glancing at his watch multiple times. Indeed, photo and video documentation confirm that Biden partook in watch-checking at least twice or thrice while on the tarmac.
Signifying a layer of privacy, Biden had closed-door meetings with the families preceding the dignified transfer ceremony. Yet, the nature and extent of his conversations with them are shrouded in mystery. ‘No comments’ was the standard response from the White House when probed about these private exchanges.
Deeper analysis into these private interactions reveal a less than pleasant undertone. Some grieving family members held President Biden directly accountable for the loss of their loved ones. The Washington Post brought to light instances where the distress was so palpable that two out of three family members of Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum opted out of meeting Biden.
McCollum’s wife who chose to engage with Biden reported a profound sense of disappointment to the publication. Her sentiments stemmed from Biden talking about his late son Beau and his past military service and eventual tryst with cancer, a conversation piece that rang hollow and felt scripted to the grieving family.
In an official response to the happenings, Biden thanked the military personnel for the ‘dangerous’ extraction from Afghanistan with a ‘moment of gratitude for the 13 service members…who gave their lives to save tens of thousands’ on August 30, 2021. This statement, in a dutiful display, listed each name of the fallen.
Officially declaring the denouement of the Afghanistan war on August 31, Biden paid homage to the departed service members. With firm resolve, he promised that their sacrifices would not be forgotten and that America was indebted to them. This seemed to be a well-rehearsed move from the President who, following a pattern, resorted to listing their names once more a year after the incident.
In their interaction with PolitiFact, the White House furnished a statement from National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson that strived to paint a sensitive image of Biden who ‘cares deeply about our service members and their families’ and acknowledged the sacrifices they have made.
Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has been riddled with criticism, the weight of which he inherited from the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban to terminate the war in February 2020. According to this agreement, all American troops were to vacate the country within a span of 18 months, or by May 2021 at the latest.
It was observed that by the time Trump’s tenure ended, he had managed to scale down service members in Afghanistan to about 2,500. However, Biden, for reasons known only to him, chose to revise the May 1 deadline and haughtily push forth a plan to withdraw by August 31.
An unclassified report from June 2023 examined the withdrawal and interestingly apportioned blame evenly on both the Trump and Biden administrations. The report argued that the decision of both Presidents posed grand challenges to respective Departments, disrupting their capacity to support the Afghan government in a manner conducive to maintaining diplomatic harmony.
However, the report didn’t stop at bipartisan blame. It took a jab at the State Department officials’ handling of the extraction, critiquing it as disorganized and ambiguously led. It pointed out that ‘key questions’ remained unanswered at the end of Trump’s tenure, implying a lack of preparedness for the changes to come.
In particular, it illustrated that the department was adrift regarding handling potential crisis points post-military withdrawal, addressing the future of the U.S. diplomatic presence in Kabul and making provisions for the Special Immigrant Visa program and other vulnerable Afghan nationals.
Gold Star Families Accuse President Biden at RNC appeared first on Real News Now.
About Author
