Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (OH) ripped President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their “betrayal” of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed during the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.
Vance joined Gold Star Family members of several of the fallen service members — Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, and Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz — on a press call Monday, which marked the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing that took their lives.
“What an incredible natural resource that we have in this country — young patriotic people who are willing to give their lives — and what an incredible betrayal that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden squandered that resource,” Vance said on the call that Breitbart News and other media attended.
Vance emphasized that many of these families are particularly troubled by the lack of accountability within the Biden-Harris administration:
What I hear from so many of the people speaking before me, talking about the loss of their sons and daughters and family members, is they’re not even mad that mistakes were made. Sometimes mistakes do happen, especially in a combat zone. What they’re angry about is the lack of accountability.
“They’re angry that we don’t know why we made the decisions that led to these young troops dying unnecessarily. They’re mad that we don’t have any accountability,” he added. “Why has nobody been fired? Why has nobody suffered any consequences for doing what happened and, again, squandering our most precious resource in this country, the lives of the people who are willing to give it all for public service?”
“The fact that we don’t know, the fact that the Harris administration has stonewalled at every step of the way, the fact that no one has been fired suggests that we have a real crisis of leadership in this country,” Vance said.
Vance added that the 2024 presidential election presents a chance “to return to the kind of normalcy” where, when mistakes are made, “we will have enough respect for the American people and for the people who put on the uniform to understand those mistakes so that we can better prevent them in the future, and that’s what is most broken here.”
Many of the Gold Star Family members who spoke on the call zoned in on a lack of accountability from the administration in the aftermath of their loved ones’ deaths in Afghanistan on August 26, 2021.
“I’m so glad and so grateful that these families were willing to talk about that because I think it drives home how much of a dishonesty lies at the heart of Kamala Harris’s political pitch when she says that she wants to return to normal,” Vance said. “She wants to ‘return decency to the Oval Office.’ She wants to ‘return common sense to the Oval Office.’ There is no decency and there is no common sense in letting 13 Americans die unnecessarily and not understanding why it happened and not forcing those who caused it to suffer some consequences.”
Vance continued:
What an unbelievable country that we have, where you have these 13 beautiful young people who are willing to give their lives for it, and what an unbelievable slap in the face it is to our country that we don’t have a leadership that’s actually equal to the young people who put on the uniform every single day. So, I aim to be the kind of vice president that honors the sacrifice of the people who wear the uniform, and I know that, when President [Donald] Trump is back in the Oval Office, we are going to get to the bottom of this, and the people who screwed this up are going to suffer some consequences.
He sees this as the “very least” of what each of the families deserves.