On Sunday — three days after explosions wreaked havoc outside of Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai International Airport — President Joe Biden flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to receive the flag-draped remains of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the attack.
Before receiving these heroes who had returned home at last, Biden decided to meet with their families.
In at least one aspect, though, it blew up in his face, when most members of a Gold Star family walked out on him before they could even exchange a word.
The development was buried deep in an article in The Washington Post that bore a headline that would never let a cursory reader know the presidential embarrassment had even happened: “Biden meets with families of service members killed in Kabul as U.S. races to exit Afghanistan.”
The article pressed the urgency of the swiftly approaching Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline and labeled Biden’s Afghanistan pullout a “tragedy,” rounded off with “tumult and growing anger with his stewardship.” Though we should all be outraged by what this withdrawal has become, by what we’re seeing, not many — if anyone at all — has as much right to be outraged as the families who grieve for their lost loved ones, their (and our) fallen heroes.
Jiennah McCollum, the expectant wife of 20-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, who died in Thursday’s suicide bombing in Kabul, awaited the “dignified transfer of remains” with two of her sisters-in-law and her father-in-law, Rylee’s sister Roice told the Post.
Replies