In a live interview with KHTS on Wednesday, Congressman Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, spoke on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Having been highly critical of the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Garcia shared with KHTS on Wednesday his gratitude towards the thousands of veterans who dedicated their lives to the Global War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks.
“It’s hard to not have this initial reaction of ‘this was all for nothing.’ To see us leave and abandon our allies, but also abandon hundreds if not thousands of Americans in Afghanistan the way that we did, it sort of compelled that reaction,” Garcia said. “I am as disappointed in President Joe Biden as much as anyone else, but when you look back at what we’ve actually accomplished in Afghanistan and around the globe, we really have done God’s work in the mission that was asked of us.”
During the interview, Garcia expressed how the sacrifices made by American veterans during the Global War on Terror may have saved countless lives, as there have not been any terror attacks to the caliber of 9/11 since that tragedy, according to Garcia.
“The veterans should be proud of the services provided,” Garcia said. “The veterans should be proud of the 20 years of stability that we’ve enjoyed and I wish the commander-in-chief shared that sentiment a little bit more. I wish he actually gave a little more talk cover to the active-duty personnel and treated them like the precious national assets that they are.”
In the commemoration of 9/11, Garcia attended two events hosted in CA25 last Saturday to meet with local veterans from the community.
“It’s really hard to believe it’s been 20 years already, in many ways it feels like it was just yesterday, just an absolutely heartbreaking day,” Garcia said. “I ended up spending (the 20th anniversary) in the morning with an organization in Santa Clarita called the Guardians.”
At the time of 9/11, Garcia was serving in the Navy and was in a training brief when news of the attacks broke, according to Garcia.
“We knew right then that our training had become more important as we transitioned into a peacetime era into what would become a 20-year Global War on Terror,” Garcia said during the Guardians event.
Hosted by the Guardians Support Center, the 9/11 memorial event commemorated the anniversary, while simultaneously offering access to a community for people with similar experiences and struggles, according to the organization.
“It was a solemn event, a very heartwarming and solemn event,” Garcia said. “I had an 80-year-old gentleman come up to me afterward and said that it was the most inspired that he had ever been.”
While the event served as a “therapeutic event” for veterans, Garcia stressed his worry that Americans may be “more vulnerable moving forward than we were before 9/11.”
“We’re struggling right now,” Garcia said of attemping to place refugees. “We’re running out of options. We are having success, but not at the rate we have been before. We are at about 100 people that we’ve been able to get out.”
Garcia noted the hard work by both veterans and citizens who have done their part to help refugees escape Afghanistan.
“There are still people going back there to try to help,” Garcia said. “There’s an American citizen from Santa Clarita who is a former Afghan refugee herself who had to leave her family behind and she actually is still trying to get her family out. She took it upon herself to fly to Pakistan to actually help with the processing of folks who had actually made it from Afghanistan to Pakistan, so this is the level of sacrifice that a lot of these folks continue to make.”
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