A conversation with then-Vice President Joe Biden left a Gold Star family perplexed and angry just minutes before the dignified transfer of their son’s remains in November 2016.
“It was a horrible conversation, it was a horrible experience,” Mike Iubelt, the father of the fallen Army Pfc. Tyler Iubelt, 20, told the Washington Examiner. “I left there feeling worse than I did before he walked through the doors.”
Iubelt was killed in a suicide bombing at Bagram Airfield, carried out by an Afghan national who worked for a U.S. defense contractor. Four people were killed in the attack and 17 were wounded.
Biden, in his first public appearance at a dignified transfer in the final months of President Barack Obama’s administration, encountered Iubelt’s family at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. There, the family said, he complimented Iubelt’s widow in a way that rankled both parents. Additionally, the family said, Biden upset them by expressing pessimism about the War in Afghanistan while they awaited the remains of their son, who died three days earlier.
“Well, unfortunately, they’re a 14th-century country, they don’t want us there, they’re never going to change,” Biden said of Afghanistan, according to Charlotte Loquasto, the fallen soldier’s mother.
That remark, which Iubelt’s parents described to the Washington Examiner in the days leading up to the 18th anniversary of America’s Oct. 7, 2001, invasion of Afghanistan, presents a stark contrast with arguments Afghan officials have made for a continued U.S. presence at a time when the administration is trying to broker an agreement with the Taliban that would permit the withdrawal of American troops. The Dover encounter, a window into Biden’s thinking as he hopes to win the presidency in 2020, stoked the frustration that has made the war politically unpopular. And it left a grieving family cold.
“That statement was so impactful that, again, silence in the group, you just don’t know how to respond,” Loquasto told the Washington Examiner.
Biden made his comments, the family said, after the Gold Star mother asked him what could be done to prevent tragedies such as the one that claimed the life of her son, whose wife Shelby had given birth to a daughter just months earlier.
“He’s second in line [to the presidency], he could potentially be our leader any day, and he doesn’t even know why we’re there,” Loquasto said.
Biden left a more positive impression on the family of Sgt. John Perry, 30, who also was killed in the blast. “We really appreciate what Vice President Biden did and his care,” Gold Star father Stewart Perry said at the time. “He stood on that flight line and saluted with his hand across his chest.”
But Biden’s comments to Shelby Iubelt cemented the negative impression for the younger soldier’s family. “He told my daughter-in-law … that she was too pretty for this to happen to her,” Mike Iubelt recalled. “It’s probably a good thing that he was surrounded by Secret Service, probably for both of us, because I’d probably be locked up in jail right now.”
Loquasto also criticized the remark. “It wasn’t the right time, but heck, I make mistakes all the time,” she said. “It was not comforting, it was creepy.”
[Read more: U-turn: Biden puts family tragedies at center of 2020 bid, despite condemning ‘tasteless’ approach four years ago]
The experience left Iubelt and Loquasto with a diminished trust in the U.S. government. It reinforced Loquasto’s suspicion of foul play in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and left her surmising that the war is driven by corruption.
“If they can’t provide a why, if we already know that they’re going to self destruct, then there has to be a financial tie to our purpose that they’re not willing to share with the public,” Loquasto said.
Iubelt’s father, who doesn’t share such doubts about Sept. 11, was nonetheless disturbed that Biden’s failure to offer a justification for the policies in place during his vice presidency.
“Why would they send our kids, our military, over to a situation to where there’s no out, there’s no end?” Iubelt said. “There’s nothing good that’s going to come out of it, according to Joe Biden.”
Afghan officials have been disputing such perceptions in an attempt to persuade President Trump not to withdraw U.S. forces from the country in the face of Taliban terrorist attacks.
“Afghanistan of today, 20 years after your support began and your help with our reconstruction from literally the rubbles, is a different place and a different country,” said Hamdullah Mohib, the national security adviser to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “Our idea or belief in democracy is solid. We want to maintain what we have and build on those achievements to create a safer Afghanistan, a safer region and a strong partnership for Afghanistan and the United States.”
Biden portrayed Afghanistan as ungovernable last month, calling for a U.S. withdrawal from the country while affirming the need to maintain troops in the region to conduct counterterrorism operations.
“We can prevent the United States from being the victim of terror coming out of Afghanistan by providing for bases — insist the Pakistanis provide bases for us to airlift from and to move against what we know,” Biden said. “We don’t need those troops there. I would bring them home.”
Iubelt scoffed at Biden’s proposal to rely on Pakistan but echoed his call for the troops to come home. The death of his son, who was awarded a Bronze Star posthumously, ended his support for the war. Now, he agrees with the “not very comforting words” Biden expressed.
“I don’t think us pulling out now affects their legacy, their sacrifice,” Iubelt said of his son and others who served in Afghanistan. “I don’t believe that it changes what they did for this country, but I don’t want to see it happen to anybody else. And for us to be there for [18 years], however long it’s been of us being over there … I couldn’t tell you one thing good that’s come from us being over there.”
As of press time, Biden’s campaign did not return emails asking for comment.
