Thirteen U.S. service members died at Abbey Gate, along with more than 100 Afghans, when a bomb detonated outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul five years ago this week. Rep. Matt Van Epps, R-Tenn., is marking the anniversary with a House resolution and a direct charge: neither former President Joe Biden nor his administration has been "adequately held responsible" for what Van Epps calls an "abject failure" of a withdrawal.
Van Epps served 10 years on active duty, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he held the role of air mission commander during part of his service. He later served in the Tennessee Army National Guard. The anniversary is personal. Two of his close friends were on the ground in Kabul during the evacuation. He said they performed "honorably and heroically" with the hand they were dealt, but should never have been put in that position.
The resolution and the policy argument
The resolution has an explicit dual aim: to memorialize the 13 service members who died, and to place on the public record Van Epps's assessment that the withdrawal did not have to end the way it did. He told Fox News Digital he vividly remembers when word came through about the pace of the exit. His boss at the time in Tennessee state government asked if he was all right. He was not.
The specific policy argument centers on the Doha Agreement, the February 2020 accord the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban. That deal called for a U.S. withdrawal within 14 months and attached conditions both the Taliban and the Afghan government were required to meet. Van Epps says the Biden team walked in, ignored those accountability measures, and missed warning signals as the Taliban advanced across the country. "They were more interested in optics than operations," he told Fox News Digital.
Democrats have largely defended Biden, pointing to the Doha Agreement itself as the framework he inherited. Van Epps's counter is that the agreement gave the incoming administration tools to enforce compliance and room for a deliberate, conditions-based exit. Those tools, he argues, went unused.
The bipartisan backlash to the August 2021 withdrawal is documented. The Taliban's speed of advance outpaced public projections, and the scenes at Kabul airport drew condemnation across party lines. Most congressional Democrats nonetheless defended the administration's handling.
The Doha Agreement set its 14-month withdrawal window from its February 2020 signing date. Van Epps's resolution places what followed squarely on the administration that chose not to enforce it.