During Friday night’s interview with Tucker Carlson the father of Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui spoke about his son’s death for the first time since the attack on the Kabul airport. Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui was one of the 13 service members killed by ISIS-K suicide bombers. Steve Nikoui, the young Corporal’s father, said he doesn’t understand why Biden chose the Kabul airport.
“It was a turkey shoot”, Nikoui explained referring to the bottleneck layout of the Kabul airport.
The broken father said his whole family has suffered adding that his wife is “doing the best that she can considering the circumstances.”
Nikoui told Carlson that he and his entire family was worried. Adding that even his son had expressed concerns over the potential risk of going to a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan.
“The way that the Taliban had pretty much infiltrated the whole country so fast, and we were kind of just, it seemed, left to just this one little airport, really concerned me,” he said. “And the videos that we were getting and the pictures we were getting from him looked somewhat chaotic.”
The devastated father said that the videos of his son interacting in Afghanistan put his family at ease, a little.
Nikoui told host Tucker Carlson the troop withdrawal would have been much different if the U.S. evacuation had come from Bagram Air Base, calling the situation at the airport a “turkey shoot,” “chaotic,” and “not really planned out.”
The morning of the attack, Nikoui and his wife both woke up with an uneasy feeling and began to monitor the news for the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, trying to glean any details they could about their son.
That evening, Nikoui said he was watching his driveway on a monitor using his phone when he saw three marines walk up. He added that that’s when his “life changed forever.”
“I went down there and met them before they even knocked on the door,” the tearful father continued.
Despite the devastating circumstances, Nikoui said the support he received from the Marines was “incredible.”
“These young men had so much empathy and were so concerned with me and my family,” he said. “I was just in awe and humbled by their performance.”
Lance Cpl. Nikoui was among 13 service members killed in a suicide bomb attack outside the Abbey Gabe at Kabul airport in Afghanistan, the deadliest day for U.S. troops in 10 years.
Watch
American forces working under heightened security and threats of another attack pressed ahead in the closing days of the U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan after a devastating suicide bombing, According to the Associated Press. U.S. officials said they had killed a member of the extremist group that the United States believes is responsible for it.