It’s been two years since the catastrophic and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the murder of 13 U.S. service members standing watch at Abbey Gate outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
While thousands of desperate Afghans clambered and begged to be let past the gate as the Taliban converged on the city, U.S. Marines stood watch as a suicide bomber approached.
“Intel guys confirmed the suicide bomber,” Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was on the ground that day and severely wounded, testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year. “Described as clean-shaven, brown-dressed, black vest and traveling with an older companion…I asked intel guys why he wasn’t apprehended sooner since we had a full description. I was told the asset could not be compromised.”
When the bodies of the fallen came back to Dover Air Force Base in flag draped coffins, President Joe Biden greeted them. But during their procession, he checked his watch.
Things got worse from there.
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“His [President Biden] words to me were, ‘My wife, Jill, and I know how you feel. We lost our son as well and brought him home in a flag-draped coffin.’ My heart started beating faster and I started shaking, knowing that their son died from cancer and they were able to be by his side,” Cheryl Rex, the mother of Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, testified this week in California, along with other Gold Star families who lost their sons and daughters on August 26, 2021.
“How someone could honestly be so heartless to say he knew how I felt a little over 24 hours,” she continued. “After this encounter, I have never had any personal correspondence, nor has my son been honored or his name spoken by this commander-in-chief or his administration on what I feel is because of their failures and poor planning to exit our troops from Afghanistan.”
This is a story Biden has told often. While it is tragic his son Beau died from cancer, likely caused by chemicals encountered during his time in Iraq, he did not die in combat. His repeated implication in political speeches and to Gold Star families that Beau died overseas, in a far away place facing evil, isn’t just wrong, it’s a shameful form of stolen valor.
It appears someone at the White House noticed, and during a veterans event in Utah this week, Biden changed his years-long tall tale.
“This is not about my son but just an example of how close it was,” Biden said. “My son Beau...the fittest guy in his unit...came home and he came home but died of neuroblastoma.”
Now if only the White House, President Biden, the Department of Defense, and State Department could admit the withdrawal from Afghanistan wasn't a success or the "greatest airlift in history."
