On Monday, the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. soldiers, former President Donald Trump linked Vice President Kamala Harris to the chaotic withdrawal from the Afghanistan war.
Watch the entire event in the player above.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery in honor of three of the slain soldiers – Sergeant Nicole Gee, Staff Sergeant Darin Hoover and Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss. Later in the day, he traveled to Michigan to speak at the National Guard Association of the United States conference.
Monday marks the third anniversary of the suicide attack on August 26, 2021, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in which more than 100 Afghans were killed in addition to the US soldiers. The terrorist militia Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
On his website Truth Social, Trump called the withdrawal on Monday “the most embarrassing moment in our country’s history. Gross incompetence – 13 DEAD American soldiers, hundreds injured and dead.”
“You don’t take out our soldiers first, you take them out LAST, when everything else has been successfully accomplished,” he said in the post.
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Since President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign, Trump has focused on Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, and her role in foreign policy decisions. He has particularly highlighted the vice president’s statements that she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision on Afghanistan.
“She boasted that she would be the last person in the room, and she was. She was the last person in the room with Biden when the two of them decided to pull troops out of Afghanistan,” he said at a rally in North Carolina last week. “She had the final vote. She had the final say, and she was all for it.”
In her own statement on the anniversary of the attack on Kabul airport, Harris said she mourned the 13 US soldiers killed. “My prayers are with their families and loved ones. Their pain and loss breaks my heart,” she said.
Harris said she honors and remembers all Americans who served in Afghanistan.
“As I have said before, President Biden has made the bold and right decision to end America’s longest war. Over the past three years, our administration has proven that we can take out terrorists, including the leaders of al-Qaida and ISIS, without troops in combat zones,” she said. “I will never hesitate to take any action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people.”
Relatives of some of the killed American soldiers appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention last month and said Biden had never publicly mentioned the names of their relatives.
“Joe Biden refused to acknowledge their sacrifice,” Christy Shamblin, Sergeant Gee’s mother-in-law, told the crowd. “Donald Trump knew the names of all our children. He knew all their stories.”
In a statement on Monday on the anniversary of the attack in Kabul, Biden said the 13 Americans killed were “patriots in the highest sense” who “embodied the best of what defines us as a nation: courageous, committed, selfless.”
“Every day since I became vice president, I have carried a card with me listing the exact number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan – including Taylor, Johanny, Nicole, Hunter, Daegan, Humberto, David, Jared, Rylee, Dylan, Kareem, Maxton and Ryan,” Biden said.
Also on Monday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that Congress would honor the 13 service members posthumously by presenting their families with the Congressional Gold Medal next month, the highest civilian award Congress can bestow.
Under Trump, the United States signed a peace deal with the Taliban that would end America’s longest war and bring U.S. troops home. Biden later referred to that deal as he sought to deflect blame for the Taliban’s invasion of Afghanistan, saying it committed him to withdrawing troops and set the stage for the chaos that engulfed the country.
A review of the withdrawal by the Biden administration acknowledged that the evacuation of Americans and their allies from Afghanistan should have begun sooner, but attributed the delays to the Afghan government and military, as well as assessments by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.
The two highest-ranking U.S. generals overseeing the evacuation said the administration had inadequately planned the withdrawal. The country’s highest-ranking military officer at the time, Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers earlier this year that he had asked Biden to keep a residual force of 2,500 troops for reinforcements. Instead, Biden opted for a much smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the U.S. embassy.
