WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday awarded Congress’ highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, to 13 U.S. soldiers killed during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Presidential Election Swirled around the event.
Both Democrats and Republicans supported the bill, which would memorialize the 13 U.S. soldiers who died along with more than 170 Afghans. Suicide bombing at Abbey Gate in Kabul airport In August 2021, President Joe Biden legislation December 2021. The top Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate spoke at a solemn ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday to honor the lives and sacrifices of our military personnel.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urged lawmakers to “ensure that the sacrifice of all our military personnel is not in vain.”
“We must care for them and their families and protect the values of freedom and democracy that they so nobly fought for and won,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat.
But rather than a moment of unity, the ceremony took place against the backdrop of a fierce debate over who was to blame for the hasty and deadly evacuation from Kabul. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and ally of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, scheduled the ceremony just hours before. First debate Between President Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“They lost their lives because of this administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Johnson said at a news conference minutes before the ceremony.
And speakers opened the ceremony by once again criticizing how the Biden administration has defended its handling of the final months of the longest war in American history.
“To the families here, I know many of you have not yet heard these words, so I say it: I am sorry,” Johnson said. “The United States government should have done everything in its power to protect its soldiers. Those who fell and were injured at Abbey Gate deserved our utmost efforts, and the families left behind deserve continued transparency, gratitude and recognition.”
Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee A rigorous investigation was announced He issued a statement on Sunday about the withdrawal, blaming the Biden administration and downplaying Trump’s role in signing the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday criticized the House report as partisan and one-sided, saying it revealed little new information and contained several inaccuracies. He noted that planning for the withdrawal began well before the withdrawal and that the fall of Kabul “happened more rapidly than anyone could have predicted.”
He also acknowledged that “not everything went according to plan. Things don’t always go according to plan” during the evacuation.
“We all share responsibility for that,” he said of the fatal accident.
Tuesday’s ceremony was attended by senior military and White House officials, including Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough and Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Pentagon investigation is over. They claim the suicide bombing could not have been prevented and that claims that troops may have witnessed the bomber are untrue.
Either way, Trump Force a retreatWith the support of the families of the slain Americans, he has been placed at the centre of the campaign, and last month his political team circulated a video of him. Attend a wreath-laying ceremony On the third anniversary of the bombing, he paid tribute to the soldiers who died at Arlington National Cemetery, Cemetery ban about partisan activity in the cemetery and altercations with cemetery officials who were trying to make sure the campaign was following the rules.
of Gold Star Military Families Lawmakers who invited Trump to the Arlington ceremony defended his actions. At a fiery news conference outside the Capitol on Monday, they pleaded with him to take the House report seriously and demanded accountability for those in leadership positions during the evacuation from Kabul.
“President Trump is certainly not perfect, but in my opinion he is a much better choice than the mess Biden and Harris have created since Kabul,” said Paula Knauss Self, whose son Ryan Knauss was killed in the Abbey Gate attack.
At Tuesday’s ceremony, Coral Doolittle, whose son Humberto A. Sanchez died, spoke on behalf of the families of Gold Star recipients, urging Americans to “always remember the 13. Call their names. Tell their stories.”
Trump and Republicans have sought to tie Harris to the withdrawal as a campaign issue, saying she was the last person in the room when Biden decided to pull out, but neither investigations by watchdog groups nor an 18-month investigation by House Republicans have found any instances where the vice president had significant influence on decision-making.
Still, House Republicans argued that Ms Harris and Mr Biden’s national security team must be held accountable for the consequences of the deadly withdrawal.
“Kamala Harris wants to be president of the United States. She wants to be commander in chief. She must be held accountable immediately on this report,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Committee Chairman McCaul also defended the timing of the report’s release, saying the committee’s investigation had to overcome resistance from the Biden administration.
He framed the investigation as a “mission to seek the truth” rather than a partisan effort, but boasted that of all the investigations House Republicans have launched into the Biden administration over the past two years, “this investigation is the one they’re most afraid of, because they know they were wrong.”
Most assessments conclude that Trump and Biden share responsibility for the disastrous end to the 20-year war, in which the enemy Taliban reoccupied Afghanistan before the last U.S. troops flew out of Kabul airport, leaving more than 2,000 U.S. troops dead.
A U.S. government war monitor in Afghanistan said President Trump’s 2020 agreement with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops and military contractors was the “single most important factor” in the collapse of U.S.-allied Afghan security forces and the Taliban’s seizure of power. The monitor said Biden’s April 2021 announcement that he would proceed with the withdrawal initiated by Trump was the second biggest factor.
Both Trump and Biden have continued the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops and, in Trump’s case, sharply reduced U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban despite the group’s failure to enter into substantive negotiations with a U.S.-backed civilian government as required by Trump’s withdrawal agreement.
Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also issued a memo in response to the Republican report, saying he was concerned about “attempts to politicize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
“The Republican Party’s partisan attempt to gather headlines rather than acknowledge the full facts and substance of the investigation has only intensified with the heat of election season,” Meeks said.
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Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.