Trump expected to tie Harris to Afghanistan War withdrawal on 3rd anniversary of attack

Former President Donald Trump is expected to tie Vice President Kamala Harris to the Afghanistan War withdrawal on the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 service members on Monday.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is expected to visit Arlington National Cemetery to pay his respects to the service members killed in the bombing outside the Kabul airport. Trump will then go to Michigan to address the National Guard Association of the United States conference.

Monday marks three years since the 26 August 2021 suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport, which killed 13 American service members and more than 100 Afghans. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Since President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid, Trump has been zeroing in on Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, and her roles in foreign policy decisions. He specifically highlights the vice president’s statements that she was the last person in the room before Biden decided on Afghanistan.

“She bragged 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 the troops out of Afghanistan,” he said last week in a North Carolina rally. “She had the final vote. She had the final say, and she was all for it.”

The relatives of some of the 13 American service members who were killed appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention last month, saying Biden had never publicly named their loved ones.

The display was an implicit response to allegations that Trump doesn’t respect veterans and had previously referred to slain World War II soldiers as suckers and losers — accusations denied by Trump.

Under Trump, the United States signed a peace agreement with the Taliban that was aimed at ending America’s longest war and bringing US troops home. Biden later pointed to that agreement as he sought to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan, saying it bound him to withdraw troops and set the stage for the chaos that engulfed the country.

A Biden administration review of the withdrawal acknowledged that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner but attributed the delays to the Afghan government and military and US military and intelligence community assessments.

The top two US generals who oversaw the evacuation said the administration inadequately planned for the withdrawal.

At the time, the nation’s top-ranking military officer, then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers earlier this year he had urged Biden to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces to give backup. Instead, Biden decided to keep a much smaller force, 650, limited to securing the US embassy.