President Joe Biden directed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to award all U.S. service members who were involved in the retrograde in Afghanistan, Operation Allies Refuge, and Operation Allies Welcome the Meritorious Unit Commendation.
Austin made the announcement in a statement on Wednesday afternoon, which coincided with the widely recognized one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The last service member boarded the final C-17 out of Kabul minutes before the clock hit midnight on Aug. 30, 2021.
The secretary also announced that he has directed the military departments to conduct an expedited review of all service members who were at Kabul’s international airport during the tumultuous evacuation to see who meets the “high standards of the President Unit Citation or appropriate individual awards.”
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“No words can properly honor the deeds we recognize with these awards,” Austin said. “What these awards reflect — and what I hope the units who receive them will feel — is the gratitude and love of our nation. I hope these awards serve as a reminder to each and every Service member who wears them of the lives they helped save and the thanks of the nation and Department of Defense they serve so well.”
The secretary traveled to Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday morning to pay his respects to the 2,352 U.S. troops who were killed in the 20-year war, Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.
Former President Donald Trump first agreed to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in February 2020 with the expectation that they would be out by May 1 of the following year, but Biden was in office at that time and extended their stay until Sept. 11 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that sparked the war.
Biden then moved that date up to the end of August 2021, while the Taliban launched a military offensive to overthrow the U.S.-backed government and military, quickly assuming control of the country by Aug. 15. The United States then launched an evacuation operation for Afghan allies who helped the U.S. military during the war, and troops were able to evacuate roughly 120,000 people, though thousands more were left behind.
The evacuation efforts at Hamid Karzai International Airport was a prime target for a terrorist attack, various defense leaders and Biden said at the time, and those concerns were actualized when an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated a device killing 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians.
A handful of the families of the service members expressed frustration with the administration in interviews leading up to the anniversary of the bombing.
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“We didn’t hear one single word from the administration — not a single word — and still [haven’t]. … Not that we would take it because of the way that this happened. Six months into it … the administration sent out letters to the families. And it was a canned letter. Everybody’s was exactly the same. They photocopied it, or it appears as though they photocopied it, and then just stamped Mr. Biden’s name to it. And that was it. Nothing personal,” Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover’s father, also named Darin, said, while Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz’s father, Mark, said, “The word ‘Afghanistan’ has allegedly [been] banned from the White House. They don’t even want to talk about that word, that country, none of it.”
Ryder also confirmed that the Pentagon’s after-action report into the withdrawal has been completed, is under review, and remains classified.
