(NewsNation) — Congress will honor the 13 U.S. service members who died during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, inviting the Gold Star families to Tuesday’s ceremony on Capitol Hill.
During the memorial ceremony, House Speaker Mike Johnson will posthumously award the soldiers the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor of Congress.
Congressional Gold Medal ceremony
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 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 Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
The ceremony will put a spotlight on the Afghanistan withdrawal ahead of the debate, and it’s likely Gold Star families will use the opportunity to speak against Biden’s administration.
“The reality is we haven’t been reached out to at all by this administration. They want this to go away, they don’t want to think about it … and if they can’t face it, it’s not going to change,” Cheryl Jules, the aunt of Sgt. Nicole Gee, said.
Afghanistan withdrawal investigation
House Republicans on Sunday released a scathing investigation into the withdrawal, casting blame on Biden’s administration and minimizing Trump’s role, despite the former president signing the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.
The 350-page report accuses Biden of prioritizing optics over safety, leading to rushed and fumbling preparations that ultimately led to a deadly and chaotic withdrawal.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, described the withdrawal as a catastrophic failure of epic proportions, saying he may hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt if he refuses to testify before the committee.
The Gold Star families are calling on the public to read the Republican report, saying they want answers as to what led to their loved ones’ tragic deaths. The families said politics should play no role in the investigation.
“Last time I checked, our military is not out there defending the Republican Party; they’re out there defending all of us,” Mark Schmitz, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, said Monday. “The fact that they’re making this a partisan issue blows my mind.”
He continued, “There are Gold Star parents you don’t want to piss off because we don’t stop fighting. I’m one of them.”
As the GOP says the investigation will continue, Gold Star families are calling on other leaders to come forward and cooperate with lawmakers.
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.
Trump, Harris link to withdrawal
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 a 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 Monday outside the Capitol, they implored for the House report to be taken seriously and demanded accountability for those in leadership during the 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.