On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Steve Nikoui, the father of Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, who was killed during the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing, said that the Biden administration failed at every level to prevent the bombing from happening and chose to exit during the worst fighting season so President Joe Biden could exit on September 11 and look good.
Nikoui said, “I think that we expect our leaders to do everything they possibly can, and for the last 14 months of continually going to Washington, D.C. and listening to the Foreign Affairs hearings and congressional hearings that have been going on with the different people that they brought in, I can honestly tell you that this administration failed, on every level, to mitigate these 13 kids’ losing their lives. If it starts from the Doha Agreement –.”
Host Leland Vittert then cut in to ask Nikoui if he blames politics or incompetence.
Nikoui responded, “[D]efinitely incompetence. They didn’t follow the Doha Agreement at all. They chose to have us exit Afghanistan in the highest — in the most likely time of [when] the Taliban has combat. So, if we would have left by the deadline of May 1, from May 1 — from January 1 to May 1, that was like a season that the Taliban doesn’t generally fight. So, instead of getting out in that time, we don’t do that, we wait until it’s peak fighting season, hey, September 11, so he can have his exit withdrawal and make it look good, one. Two, after the whole thing was done — said and done, they killed an innocent family…and tried to use them as a scapegoat.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
