The father of the late Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, who died in the Kabul airport bombing on Aug. 26, 2021, lamented President Joe Biden’s alleged silence on the attack.
Darin Hoover, Sr. told “Fox & Friends” Thursday that he wants answers from the three generals in charge at that time as to why and how the attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul occurred. The attack killed 13 service members, including Hoover’s son, as well as hundreds of Afghans.
“The [question] that I still have is ‘How.’ How in the world did it get to the point that it got to? With the chaos and everything else going on, why did it get there? That our men, our women that were there on a humanitarian effort, why were they set up? I don’t understand. You know, there’s three generals that I want answers from. [Lloyd] Austin, [Mark] Milley, and [Kenneth] McKenzie, and all the rest of them. I want to know some answers of why and how we got to that point.”
The Biden administration has yet to release its after-action reports on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, CBS News reported Wednesday. “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade added Biden was allegedly offered a verbal briefing about the deadly withdrawal, but the president never took the offer.
“It’s absolutely despicable that we haven’t heard a single word, not one word, from anybody in this administration or the DOD [Department of Defense] as to why this happened the way that it did,” Hoover continued. “Or the State Department, for that matter.”
The DOD issued a message to gold star families in an Aug. 30 statement commemorating the end of the Afghanistan war. (RELATED: ‘You Don’t Even Care’: Mother Of Slain Marine Blasts Biden For Not Mentioning 13 Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan)
“Two decades of noble service demanded significant and selfless sacrifice. Many Service members still bear the wounds of war, to body and to soul, and 2,461 brave heroes never made it home,” the statement read. “To our Gold Star families: We hold your loved ones in our hearts – and we pledge to you the unwavering commitment of a grateful Nation.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin honored the 13 service members killed in a Wednesday statement to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the withdrawal. He announced the heroes who served in Afghanistan will be awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation, and will give certain units or individuals the Presidential Unit Citation.
“No other military could have protected so many lives under such challenging circumstances in such a short amount of time – not just because of our airlift or our logistics capabilities, but most of all because of the immense compassion, skill, and dedication of American Service members,” Austin said in the statement. “As the Department observed last week, 13 courageous Americans gave their lives to defend their teammates and to help save the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Afghan people.”
President Joe Biden issued a statement on the anniversary of the attack Friday.
“Today, I am praying for the families of those 13 fallen warriors, who lost a piece of their soul one year ago,” Biden wrote in his statement. “Our nation can never repay such incredible sacrifice, but we will never fail to honor our sacred obligation to the families and survivors they left behind.”