Current:Home > BackCongress honors 13 troops killed during Kabul withdrawal as politics swirl around who is to blame-LoTradeCoin
Congress honors 13 troops killed during Kabul withdrawal as politics swirl around who is to blame
View Date:2024-12-23 21:07:02
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.
veryGood! (2)
Related
- Alexandra Daddario shares first postpartum photo of baby: 'Women's bodies are amazing'
- Chris Brown sued for $50M after alleged backstage assault of concertgoers in Texas
- WNBA All-Star Game has record 3.44 million viewers, the league’s 3rd most watched event ever
- IOC approves French Alps bid backed by President Macron to host the 2030 Winter Olympics
- Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight odds will shift the longer the heavyweight bout goes
- Florida school board unlikely to fire mom whose transgender daughter played on girls volleyball team
- How employers are taking steps to safeguard workers from extreme heat
- Biles, Richardson, Osaka comebacks ‘bigger than them.’ They highlight issues facing Black women
- 'I was in total shock': Woman wins $1 million after forgetting lotto ticket in her purse
- Wisconsin, in a first, to unveil a Black woman’s statue in its Capitol
Ranking
- California researchers discover mysterious, gelatinous new sea slug
- Matthew Stafford reports to training camp after Rams, QB modify contract
- Some Republicans are threatening legal challenges to keep Biden on the ballot. But will they work?
- Bette Midler and Sheryl Lee Ralph dish on aging, their R-rated movie 'Fabulous Four'
- The boy was found in a ditch in Wisconsin in 1959. He was identified 65 years later.
- Voters who want Cornel West on presidential ballot sue North Carolina election board
- The Daily Money: Kamala Harris and the economy
- Listeria outbreak linked to deli meats causes 2 deaths. Here's what to know about symptoms.
Recommendation
-
Panel advises Illinois commemorate its role in helping slaves escape the South
-
Former US Army civilian employee sentenced to 15 years for stealing nearly $109 million
-
Bangladesh protests death toll nears 180, with more than 2,500 people arrested after days of unrest
-
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez set to resign on Aug. 20 after being convicted on federal bribery charges
-
It's Red Cup Day at Starbucks: Here's how to get your holiday cup and cash in on deals
-
Kamala Harris hits campaign trail in Wisconsin as likely presidential nominee, touts past as prosecutor
-
Billy Ray Cyrus' Estranged Wife Firerose Marks Major Milestone Amid Divorce
-
John Mulaney's Ex Anna Marie Tendler Details Her 2-Week Stay at Psychiatric Hospital