Three years ago, in a bombing at the Abbey Gate outside the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, 13 American soldiers were murdered in a suicide bombing in the middle of the chaotic exit from Afghanistan ordered by President Biden. It was a disastrous capstone to one of Biden's worst foreign policy blunders, and we're seeing the ramifications of that now.

In a statement, the Biden White House decided to acknowledge the lost lives by finally naming the dead and the losses incurred. This is big since Biden claimed in the debate that ended his political career that no soldiers had died under his watch. This is despite one of the fathers of those dead soldiers getting arrested at the State of the Union when Biden ignored the Abbey Gate deaths then, too.

This story is all back in the news again because Donald Trump went to Arlington Cemetery with the families of the slain for a memorial service. The press is covering this as bad because some staffer at Arlington Cemetery tried to stop this from happening. The same staffer claims they won't "press charges" over the event.

If this seems like the petty tyrant of a bureaucracy, it's because it is. The families in question invited and asked Trump to attend the event. The group of gold-star families released a joint statement in which they explicitly said they were grateful for Trump's presence with his team.

Democrats tried making a stink out of the event, claiming that Trump violated the cemetery by taking pictures there when he wasn't allowed. The US Army even put out a statement to that effect.

This would be news if it weren't hypocritical. All you have to do is travel back in time through Joe Biden's X/Twitter or Instagram page to find pictures and videos of him in the exact location as Trump and other cemeteries, using those places as a campaign backdrop.

That's not the kicker, though. The real issue is that the same families say that neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris has ever contacted them about what happened in 2021.

"There's never even been condolences [from Biden or Harris]. They just want to pretend it didn't happen," said Cheryl Juels, the aunt of fallen 23-year-old Marine Sergeant Nicole M. Gee. "They want to take credit for ending the war, but they don't want to take any responsibility for the way it all went down." Juels said Biden has "never once reached out to any of our family. Kamala Harris has never reached out."

She wasn't alone. Darin Hoover, the father of Sgt. Taylor Hoover told local news, "There was nothing political about this in inviting President Trump, inviting Governor Cox. There was nothing that should have been political about it. It has blown up into something that is absolutely ridiculous."

The families that attended held a memorial service, they invited Trump, and they brought attention to the memories of their loved ones who died in the withdrawal. Everything they've done makes sense.

Democrats are mad at Trump for attending a funeral but have less to say about the current administration ignoring families who lost loved ones. There's a second level of insult here, too. Hoover gets at this in his quote: Democrats are accusing these families of a political event, not a memorial on the day events happened three years ago.

The politicization is coming from the Democratic Party, not the families or Trump. It's a choice to ignore the families and the sacrifice and act outraged when they seek public acknowledgment of their losses. Biden, Harris, and the Democratic Party chose poorly.

The Afghanistan withdrawal was so bad that after Biden commenced with it, Veterans Affairs had to issue guidelines and warnings to veterans of the Afghanistan War. There was a deep sense that the collapse overseen by Biden would lead to increased mental stress among veterans, and they were encouraged to seek help.

It wasn't just the 13 Gold Star families who felt ignored by the Biden administration. Biden practically demanding cheers for his disastrous pullout made countless veterans feel worthless. It was the final disgrace of an administration so self-absorbed with itself and comparing itself to FDR that it ignored the disasters it had overseen.

A simple reversal of this trend would involve contacting these Gold Star families and expressing condolences. Would it be too late? Yes. Is it still the right thing to do? Also yes.

Neither the families in question nor the country at large is holding its breath over that, however. Harris continues the Biden tradition of staying as far away from hard questions as possible.

These events didn't have to go down like this. It was a choice, and Democrats chose poorly. We honor our vets, not attack Gold Star families for seeking memorials.