WASHINGTON — A Tennessee soldier and twelve other fallen service members were posthumously awarded one of the nation's highest honors on Tuesday more than three years after a suicide bomber killed nearly 200 people during the final days of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
On Aug. 26, 2021, Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss died in an attack at Abbey Gate outside the Kabul, Afghanistan airport that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and 170 Afghans amid a chaotic evacuation and withdrawal from the country. He was the only U.S. Army soldier to die in the attack.
Knauss was 23 at the time. He was from East Tennessee and graduated from Gibbs High School in Corryton.
On Tuesday, more than three years after their death, members of Congress formally presented the Congressional Gold Medal to the 13 fallen servicemembers. Knauss' mother, father and stepmother were in attendance for the ceremony and accepted the medal. You can watch the full ceremony below.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R- Louisiana) apologized to the families of the fallen.
"To the families who are here, I know many of you have yet to hear these words. So I will say them. We are sorry. The United States government should have done everything to protect our troops. Those fallen and wounded at Abbey Gate deserved our best efforts. And the families who have been left to pick up the pieces continue to deserve transparency and appreciation and recognition to you and the families who are not here. I can promise you this, you are not alone and shouldering the burdens from that day," Johnson said.
Johnson also spoke about Knauss personally.
"If you picked up Ryan Knauss’ second-grade yearbook, you’d find a picture he had drawn of himself in uniform next to the words, 'I want to be a Marine.' It was clear courage and commitment flowed through his veins," Johnson said.
The ceremony came one day after Republicans in the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a 350-page investigation on the 2021 withdrawal and attack, placing most of the blame on the Biden administration. Democrats and the White House criticized the report for being partisan and downplaying the Trump administration's role in signing off on the terms of the withdrawal agreement.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In an interview with 10News on Tuesday, he accused the Biden administration of lying about the withdrawal "at every turn."
"The administration prioritized optics over safety," Burchett said, accusing the Biden administration of rushing the withdrawal to finish by a symbolic date of Sept. 11. "They were determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what, no matter the cost. We all agreed that it was time to start getting out of there, but to what degree?"
Burchett also criticized the "cowardice" and "ineptitude" of military leadership and intelligence at the time. He pointed to testimony from a Marine Corps sniper who had asked permission to take out a suicide bomber that was in his sights, saying the sniper was told "no."
Burchett was one of 160 members of the U.S. House who sponsored the bipartisan resolution on Aug. 31, 2021, to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the 13 fallen. The number of co-sponsors eventually grew to 326 members. The resolution was passed in Nov. 2021, and President Joe Biden signed the resolution in December of that year.
"It was a very nice service, of course, it won't bring back their kids and their family members. I think it just shows just how terribly we failed those families. It should have never happened," Burchett said. "No one has been held accountable, and probably never will."
Months after the blast, Pentagon officials said they concluded the 13 servicemembers' deaths were "not preventable."
According to a report from the Associated Press, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby responded to the report on Monday saying the pullout happened "a lot faster than anyone could have anticipated" and that "not everything went according to plan."
“We hold ourselves all accountable for that,” Kirby said.