Soldier Blasts Biden After Getting Charged for Gear He Left in Afghanistan

A former Army soldier is blaming the Biden administration after he says he was ordered to pay for gear he brought home from his last deployed mission in Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden has made "no apologies" for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan following two decades of American involvement there. A few months after he was sworn in, Biden announced that U.S. troops would exit the country by September 11, 2021, saying, "It's time to end America's longest war."

His administration met a self-imposed August 31, 2021, deadline with evacuations of between 13,000 and 18,000 people per day. The withdrawal, described by some as a scramble and mad dash to meet the deadline, led to 13 U.S. service members being killed—the first service members killed in action since February 2020—and at least 18 others were injured during an attack at a checkpoint outside Kabul's airport.

In addition, 170 Afghans were killed. In total, more than 120,000 people were eventually evacuated before September 2021.

On Monday, the former U.S. soldier wrote on TikTok that it was his gear turn-in day following approximately four years of active duty in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. The experience of leaving the service, he said, made him want to "holler, scream, yell."

"Two years ago, my unit was deployed to Afghanistan for the Afghanistan withdrawal," said the soldier, who goes by "Brock" on TikTok and has the handle @the.michael.fam. "We spent a few weeks over there. It was hectic, it was chaotic, it was disgusting, and it made me very disappointed in our government. Today, I'm reminded how disappointed I am in our government.

He continued: "They want to charge me $500 to $1,000 for gear I was ordered to leave in Afghanistan two years ago because as the last two birds were sitting on the tarmac ready to leave, there wasn't any room for extra gear, extra weight. Therefore, we were told to leave it. Some lower-level dudes including myself were like, 'No, this stuff is expensive. I'm not leaving this. I'm gonna get charged for this when it's time to leave.'"

By Tuesday morning, the video had been removed from TikTok. It was also posted on other platforms like X (formerly Twitter) by conservative accounts such as Libs of TikTok.

The former soldier said that the Army reversed course and instead charged him out of pocket for taking the gear back with him to the U.S.

"Meanwhile, we can continue to give millions of dollars to the Taliban; we can give billions of dollars to Ukraine; we can give billions of dollars to student debt relief; we can give a bunch of stupid stimulus checks, we can cut those to the American people," he continued.

"But we can't cover $500 to $1,000 for a dude that left gear in Afghanistan—for a dude that left gear in a place you put me to begin with. The government is so stinking backwards right now, man. This administration's last priority is the American people, and inside of the American people their last priority is their soldiers, their airmen, their Marines, their Navy."

At the conclusion of his video, the ex-soldier showed a sheet of paper with costs attributed to his name, and the name on the sheet seemed to match his own. The total cost for the gear and other items/services was shown to be $3,561.26, but he did not divulge or specify what those costs were associated with.

He ended the video by thanking anyone who could help fund his gear return, adding that he thought his exit from the armed forces would be "bittersweet."

"I'm just so happy to separate," he said. "I'm very excited to stop serving my government and just getting started serving my country. Sad."

A Pew Research Center survey conducted right before the Afghanistan withdrawal found that 54 percent of American respondents supported the evacuation. About 7 in 10 respondents said the U.S. mostly failed in its long wartime objectives.

After the withdrawal, Biden and his administration were criticized after the Taliban took control of the country. The situation was exacerbated by a refugee crisis, as well as concerns about militants using the country, now devoid of U.S. troops, as a safe refuge.

The Pew survey also found that large majorities of Americans expressed dissatisfaction with how the withdrawal was carried out. A subsequent survey of 18 countries conducted in the spring of 2022 found similar results, as most agreed with the evacuation but not the way it was done by the U.S.