Mark Alford: “I want to speak from my heart right now on a subject matter that we dealt with yesterday in the rotunda not too many…”

“I want to speak from my heart right now on a subject matter that we dealt with yesterday in the rotunda not too many feet from this House floor. I was honored to be at the ceremony yesterday for the 13 Gold Star families, the 13 servicemembers who bravely gave their lives 3 years ago on the wall at Abbey Gate due to a decision made by a failed administration to get all American troops out of Afghanistan, to leave them there--our allies--clinging to the wheels of aircraft as they tried to escape the grip of the Taliban. It was a flawed decision. This administration never apologized to those 13 families for that critical mistake in our world history. Yesterday, someone finally had the guts to apologize to those families: our Speaker, Mike Johnson. I applaud him for that. The highest honor that Congress can bestow, the Congressional Gold Medal, was given posthumously to those 13 brave individuals, including Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz from Missouri. I realize that that apology and that acknowledgment and those Congressional Gold Medals will never completely heal those families, but I do think it was a step in the right direction. I was honored to have dinner with some of those families last night along with Darrell Issa, Ken Calvert, and Brian Mast, sitting down with those families and just hearing their stories and how much it meant to be in that rotunda yesterday, and for our Nation to finally acknowledge that it was a mistake.…”