The 13 Gold Star families who lost loved ones roughly two years ago in a bombing at the end of the U.S. military's 20 yearslong war in Afghanistan pushed for accountability from the Biden administration and Department of Defense on Tuesday.
Parents of nine of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, appeared at a roundtable event on Tuesday in front of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and a handful of other lawmakers. Their brother, son, daughter, or sister died when a suicide bomber detonated a device at the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport while the U.S. military evacuated more than 100,000 Afghan civilians who feared life under a new Taliban regime.
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A common sentiment among the parents who spoke during the event was a demand for answers surrounding the decisions that led up to the bombing and a collective frustration toward current military and administration officials, including President Joe Biden.
"He will never have the chance to get married. He will never experience the joy of being a father, and he would have made one hell of a dad. We will never meet our grandkids. Our family name died that day. Two years have gone by and where are we? To be frank, we're knee deep in bull**** is where we are," Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, said. "Everyone who held a key position in the military still has that position or has been promoted."
Darin Hoover, the father of Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, called on Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to resign from their positions.
"None of you have the respect of your men and women anymore," he said. "Do what is right. It's past time."
When asked about the hearing, deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, "U.S. military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan made decisions that they could with the information that they had at the time. They were given the decision-making capability and were responding to threats on the ground in real time, and so we are very proud of the work that our commanders and our service members did not during just the evacuation in those few weeks but over the 20-year war."
McCaul and his committee are investigating the military's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He announced at the start of the hearing that the Department of Defense has agreed to allow Lt. Col. Brad Whited of the Marine Corps to sit for a transcribed interview with the committee, which is seeking his testimony due to previous testimony from Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews. Vargas-Andrews told the committee in a hearing earlier this year that he identified a person who fit the description of the would-be bomber but did not get approval to eliminate the threat because his leadership, Whited included, did not know who held the authority to approve such a call.
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"We owe Gold Star families everything. We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones," Milley said in a statement to Fox News. "I trust the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps did the best they could in briefing the families who had loved ones killed at Abbey Gate. I believe the briefers gave every piece of information that they could. If there was issues with that, we need to take whatever corrective action is necessary."
Singh said the department welcomes transparency and accountability, though she said the investigation from U.S. Central Command "was incredibly exhaustive."