Army veteran and U.S. Representative Matt Van Epps, R-Tenn., has introduced a resolution to mark the five-year anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Van Epps, a former Army aviator, described the withdrawal as an "abject failure" by the Biden-Harris administration and stated that the situation "did not have to happen."
The resolution aims to remember the 13 U.S. service members and over 100 Afghan civilians who died in the August 2021 attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Van Epps expressed that neither the Biden administration nor former President Joe Biden have been "adequately held responsible" for the consequences of the withdrawal.
Van Epps, who served 10 years on active duty with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, including time as an air mission commander, stated that the chaotic nature of the withdrawal was deeply frustrating to him and his colleagues. He recalled his own strong negative reaction upon hearing about the withdrawal plans.
"I had two very close friends who were there as part of that evacuation," Van Epps said in an interview. "And they served honorably and heroically and did incredible work with the hand that they were dealt, they just should never have been put in that situation to begin with."
While the Biden administration faced bipartisan criticism for its handling of the withdrawal amidst the Taliban's rapid advance, many Democrats have defended President Biden by pointing to the agreement made by the Trump administration with the Taliban in February 2020. That agreement outlined a U.S. withdrawal within 14 months.
Van Epps, however, defended the Trump-era peace deal, arguing it stipulated a "very deliberate withdrawal from Afghanistan that had conditions that the Taliban and the Afghan government had to meet for us to withdraw our soldiers." He contended that the Biden administration disregarded these conditions and ignored warning signs as the Taliban gained territory.
"And then the Biden team gets in, totally ignores the Doha agreement where they could have enforced those accountability measures on the Taliban, totally missed and ignored all of these warning signals as the Taliban was gaining ground across the country," Van Epps stated. "They were more interested in optics than operations."