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President Donald Trump on Monday signed a proclamation commemorating the anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack during the Afghanistan withdrawal that took the lives of 13 military service members.
Trump was surrounded by Gold Star families as he signed the proclamation in the White House.
“We remember these great 13 souls, but we also remember the people that were so badly injured, our soldiers, 32 of them approximately,” he said. “We understand that it should’ve never happened, should have never been allowed to have happened.”
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Vice President JD Vance, who served in the Marines, said Monday’s event was a “rectification of a wrong.”
“The fact that the President of the United States lost your loved ones through incompetence, but never acknowledged it in your government, never actually put pen to paper to say we’re grateful for your sacrifice,” he said of former President Joe Biden.
The Biden administration was heavily criticized for the attack and the way the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was executed.
In 2021, Biden removed U.S. troops from Afghanistan, following up on existing plans from the first Trump administration in 2020 with Taliban leaders to end the war in the region. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed during the withdrawal process from a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, outside the then-Hamid Karzai International Airport, as the Taliban quickly seized control of Kabul.
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Biden faced scrutiny after the withdrawal as the Taliban quickly took over Afghanistan again and more than a dozen U.S. service members died supporting evacuation efforts.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Abbey Gate bombing convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin to start his war with Ukraine.
“Because he saw how incompetent our military was under Biden,” he said. “The military needs to answer for what happened in Afghanistan.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, an Afghanistan veteran, is leading a deep dive into what happened at Abbey Gate.
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