OPINION:
Thirteen American service members were killed during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan — the botching that was overseen by President Joe Biden.
But Biden understands how the family members of these military heroes feel because, after all, his son, Beau, died of cancer.
Biden isn’t just clueless and feckless.
He’s pathologically unfeeling and self-absorbed.
In public testimony this week, Cheryl Rex told how Biden, after the withdrawal-sparked killing of her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, said this to her: “[He] entered the room … he approached me [and] his words to me were, ‘My wife Jill and I know how you feel. We lost our son as well and brought him home in a flag-draped coffin.’ My heart started beating faster and I started shaking, knowing that their son died from cancer and they were able to be by his side.”
Joe “Beau” Biden III died in a Walter Reed National Military Medical Center bed in 2015. A few years later, Biden was out and about, attributing his son’s death to some sort of glory stroke from Iraq service, saying the waste pits troops burned while deployed contribute significantly — that they played a “significant role,” he said — in Beau’s later brain cancer diagnosis.
In other words: Biden lied to Gold Star families.
And while America knew shortly after the tragedy called Afghanistan Withdrawal that Biden lied and shamelessly exploited his own son’s cancer death to score political points, all the while downplaying the killing of the 13 service members so as to skate accountability for their senseless deaths — the wounds were reopened this week because Rep. Darrell Issa hosted a forum to demand more answers from the White House about this ill-run operation.
Americans still don’t have the full picture of what occurred and why; Team Biden is still dodging on the matter of suicide bombing versus strategic attack — a clarification that would go far toward determining if the killing of 13 U.S. military members, and scores of others, could have been, at least in part, avoided.
“The Department of Defense expresses our deepest condolences to the Gold Star Families who lost loved ones during the tragic bombing at Abbey Gate,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “We are forever grateful for their service, sacrifice, and committed efforts during the evacuation operations.”
Just don’t ask Biden for their names.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
