H.Res. 1497

IV
  119TH CONGRESS
  2D SESSION
  H. RES. 1497
  Commemorating the 13 United States servicemembers killed at Abbey Gate
  during and as a result of President Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan
  withdrawal.
  IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
  AUGUST 27, 2026
  Mr. VAN EPPS (for himself, Mrs. WAGNER, Mr. WEBSTER of Florida, Ms.
  BOEBERT, Mr. MCCAUL, Mr. HUIZENGA, Mr. BURCHETT, Mr. FINE, Mr.
  BARRETT, Mr. MOORE of Alabama, Mrs. KIM, Mr. STAUBER, Mr. MIL-
  LER of Ohio, Mr. WEBER of Texas, Mr. CALVERT, Ms. TENNEY, Mr.
  PFLUGER, Mr. JACKSON of Texas, Mrs. LUNA, Mr. MILLS, Mr. STEUBE,
  Mr. FRY, Mr. DUNN of Florida, Mr. OWENS, Mr. CLYDE, Mrs.
  HARSHBARGER, Mr. SMITH of Nebraska, Mr. BARR, Mr. PALMER, Mr.
  MCGUIRE, Mr. SMITH of New Jersey, Mr. ALFORD, Mr. BAIRD, and Mr.
  WILLIAMS of Texas) submitted the following resolution; which was re-
  ferred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Com-
  mittee on Foreign Affairs, for a period to be subsequently determined by
  the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall with-
  in the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
  RESOLUTION
  Commemorating the 13 United States servicemembers killed
  at Abbey Gate during and as a result of President
  Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.
  Whereas 5 years ago the Biden administration’s chaotic and
  disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  (1) undid 20 years of American sacrifice in a span
  of weeks;
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00001   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  2
  (2) surrendered the country to the same Taliban re-
  gime the United States toppled after September 11th;
  (3) handed terrorists a safe haven and
  $7,000,000,000 in American-funded weapons and equip-
  ment;
  (4) stranded Americans and allies behind enemy
  lines;
  (5) emboldened adversaries of the United States
  around the globe; and
  (6) cost the lives of 13 United States
  servicemembers killed at Abbey Gate on August 26,
  2021;
  Whereas the Biden administration was so determined to with-
  draw from Afghanistan regardless of conditions on the
  ground that it ignored the Taliban’s violations of the
  Doha Agreement, the warnings of security officers and
  diplomats at the United States Embassy in Kabul, and
  the objections of the Afghan Government and North At-
  lantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies;
  Whereas State Department Spokesperson Ned Price admitted
  in a transcribed interview with the Committee on Foreign
  Affairs of the House of Representatives that Taliban
  compliance was ‘‘immaterial’’ to the decision;
  Whereas the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Com-
  mander of United States Central Command, and the
  Commander of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission each
  recommended retaining approximately 2,500 United
  States troops, the intelligence community warned of rapid
  collapse, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
  Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned Congress in March
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  2021 that, absent United States military and contractor
  support, the Afghan Government ‘‘would probably face
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00002   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  3
  collapse’’, and the British Chief of the Defence Staff
  warned that ‘‘withdrawal under these circumstances
  would be perceived as a strategic victory for the
  Taliban’’, yet President Biden ignored them all and fixed
  a withdrawal date of September 11, 2021, for the sake
  of symbolic headlines;
  Whereas the United States abandoned Bagram Air Base in
  the middle of the night without telling the base’s Afghan
  commander, who learned of the departure only hours
  later, after looters had stormed the gates, thereby surren-
  dering a fortified airfield with two runways, including one
  nearly 12,000 feet long, giving up a strategic position
  within reach of China’s Lop Nur nuclear testing grounds,
  and forcing the entire evacuation through the insecure,
  single-runway Hamid Karzai International Airport
  (HKIA);
  Whereas the abandonment of Bagram left the United States-
  built Parwan detention facility to the Taliban, who on
  August 15, 2021, freed thousands of prisoners, including
  Abdul Rahman al-Logari, the ISIS–K terrorist who car-
  ried out the Abbey Gate bombing 11 days later;
  Whereas the forced withdrawal of United States and inter-
  national contractors gutted the Afghan military, a 2021
  CENTCOM assessment cited by SIGAR concluded the
  Afghan Air Force could not be sustained as combat effec-
  tive without contractor support, and, according to
  SIGAR’s July 2021 quarterly report, the Taliban tripled
  the districts under its control from 73 in April 2021 to
  221 by July 2021, even as the withdrawal proceeded;
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  Whereas the investigation by the Committee on Foreign Af-
  fairs of the House of Representatives found that Depart-
  ment of State officials, fearing bad optics, refused to plan
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00003   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  4
  for a noncombatant evacuation operation until August 6,
  2021, days before Kabul fell, did not order one until the
  Taliban entered Kabul on August 15, and refused to
  close the United States Embassy in Kabul even as secu-
  rity collapsed, resulting in the loss of sensitive materials
  to the Taliban;
  Whereas the Biden administration drew United States forces
  down to a skeleton presence of roughly 650 troops before
  evacuating American personnel, leaving the civilian side
  of HKIA to be overrun amid the Taliban’s seizure of
  Kabul and forcing a suspension of evacuation flights until
  thousands of United States reinforcements could be
  rushed back in, while the Taliban ringed the airport with
  checkpoints where Americans and Afghan allies were de-
  tained, refused entry, and assaulted;
  Whereas the Biden administration issued no guidance on who
  could be evacuated, forcing young servicemembers and
  foreign service officers to decide who lived and who was
  left behind, and the investigation of the Committee on
  Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives found
  that alternative ‘‘lily pad’’ staging locations were not se-
  cured until August 19 and that the Department of
  Transportation waited 5 days after Kabul fell to permit
  foreign civil aircraft to fly evacuation missions;
  Whereas an internal Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
  audit found that ‘‘the need to immediately evacuate Af-
  ghans overtook the normal processes required to deter-
  mine whether individuals attempting to enter the United
  States pose a threat to national security’’;
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  Whereas a September 2022 Department of Homeland Secu-
  rity Office of Inspector General report found that vetting
  data was ‘‘inaccurate, incomplete, or missing’’, including
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00004   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  5
  11,110 records listing a birthday of January 1, and Cus-
  toms and Border Protection (CBP) guidance was never-
  theless to admit or parole evacuees even with improper
  identification documents;
  Whereas Afghan men were admitted accompanied by young
  girls alleged to be victims of forced marriage, the sexual
  abuse of children by powerful men in Afghanistan is ex-
  tensively documented and was rarely prosecuted, and the
  United States has no access to the former Afghan Gov-
  ernment’s criminal records, meaning tens of thousands of
  Afghan men entered the country without United States
  officials having any means of knowing whether they were
  predators;
  Whereas Russ Travers, the National Security Council’s Dep-
  uty Homeland Security Advisor during the withdrawal,
  admitted, ‘‘From my perspective, it was a slow-moving
  train wreck. We were going to fail; the question was how
  badly we were going to fail.’’;
  Whereas Abbey Gate, a main inroad to HKIA that was as-
  sessed as the gate at highest risk of attack, was never
  properly reinforced, as the Biden administration relied on
  the Taliban’s haphazard and insincere security efforts
  and withheld authority for United States forces to strike
  ISIS–K cells for fear of upsetting the Taliban;
  Whereas, at 5:36 p.m. on August 26, 2021, an ISIS–K ter-
  rorist detonated a suicide bomb at Abbey Gate, killing 13
  United States servicemembers and approximately 170 Af-
  ghan civilians and wounding scores more, in the deadliest
  day for the United States military in Afghanistan since
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  August 2011;
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00005   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  6
  Whereas President Biden never publicly spoke the names of
  the 13 fallen, with Gold Star families describing his con-
  duct at Dover Air Force Base as scripted and hollow, re-
  counting that he spoke of his own son rather than their
  children, and never contacted them afterward, and photo-
  graphs confirm he checked his watch multiple times dur-
  ing the dignified transfer as the flag-draped remains of
  the fallen were carried past him;
  Whereas the withdrawal turned Afghanistan back into a safe
  haven for al-Qaida and ISIS–K;
  Whereas former FBI Director Christopher Wray testified
  that the loss of a United States presence crippled the
  ability of the United States to collect intelligence and
  monitor threats to the homeland;
  Whereas under President Biden’s open border, CBP data
  show 382 individuals on the terrorist watchlist were ap-
  prehended crossing between ports of entry from fiscal
  year 2021, through fiscal year 2024, alongside nearly
  2,000,000 known gotaways;
  Whereas the Taliban carried out reprisal killings of Afghans
  who served with the United States;
  Whereas the United Nations has documented the Taliban’s
  institutionalized oppression of women, which the United
  Nations Special Rapporteur called ‘‘the most extreme and
  systematic assault on gender equality in the world
  today’’;
  Whereas the investigations conducted under President Biden
  were inadequate, no official was ever held accountable,
  and until the day he left office, President Biden defended
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  the withdrawal and never admitted it was a mistake, a
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00006   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  7
  refusal Gold Star families have described as tantamount
  to betrayal;
  Whereas the 13 servicemembers killed at Abbey Gate, 1 sail-
  or, 1 soldier, and 11 Marines, deserve lasting recognition,
  accountability from those responsible, and a commitment
  that such failures will never be repeated, and their names
  are—
  (1) Petty Officer Third Class Maxton W. Soviak,
  United States Navy;
  (2) Staff Sergeant Ryan C. Knauss, United States
  Army;
  (3) Staff Sergeant Darin T. Hoover, United States
  Marine Corps;
  (4) Sergeant Johanny Rosario Pichardo, United
  States Marine Corps;
  (5) Sergeant Nicole L. Gee, United States Marine
  Corps;
  (6) Corporal Hunter Lopez, United States Marine
  Corps;
  (7) Corporal Daegan W. Page, United States Marine
  Corps;
  (8) Corporal Humberto A. Sanchez, United States
  Marine Corps;
  (9) Lance Corporal David L. Espinoza, United
  States Marine Corps;
  (10) Lance Corporal Jared M. Schmitz, United
  States Marine Corps;
  (11) Lance Corporal Rylee J. McCollum, United
  States Marine Corps;
  (12) Lance Corporal Dylan R. Merola, United States
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  Marine Corps; and
  (13) Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nikoui, United
  States Marine Corps; and
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00007   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6300   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497
  8
  Whereas President Biden and those in his administration who
  orchestrated the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal have
  yet to take accountability for ignoring reality and re-
  peated warnings, a failure whose price was paid by the
  Gold Star families of those killed at Abbey Gate, by
  Americans harmed by unvetted Afghan evacuees, by the
  Afghan people suffering under Taliban rule, by the allies
  and Americans left behind, and by the NATO partners
  they abandoned: Now, therefore, be it
  1  Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
  2  (1) solemnly commemorates the fifth anniver-
  3  sary of the loss of 13 brave servicemembers at the
  4  Abbey Gate bombing;
  5  (2) condemns the Biden-Harris administration’s
  6  dereliction of duty to steward American lives and
  7  property during the withdrawal from Afghanistan;
  8  and
  9  (3) denounces the historically damaging deci-
  10  sion of the Biden-Harris administration to put at
  11  risk Americans and noncombatant civilians through
  12  the cavalier forfeiture of materiel and military prop-
  13  erty to the Taliban.
  Æ
ssavage on LAPJG3WLY3PROD with BILLS
  •HRES 1497 IH
  VerDate Sep 11 2014   21:31 Aug 27, 2026   Jkt 069200   PO 00000   Frm 00008   Fmt 6652   Sfmt 6301   E:\BILLS\HR1497.IH   HR1497