We Had the Kabul Bomber in Our Crosshairs

When we first wrote about the suicide bombing that slaughtered at least 169 Afghan civilians and 13 American warriors at Kabul Airport on August 27, 2021, we called it “A Massacre We Saw Coming.”
Only now are we learning just how terribly accurate that assessment was. As it turns out, one of our snipers had the suicide bomber — at least one of them — literally in his crosshairs.
Last Wednesday, that Marine Corps sniper, Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews, recounted in testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee how his team had deployed to the airport on August 26, 2021. As the New York Post reports, they were “tracking a man who intelligence officers believed was a suicide bomber ‘throughout the entirety’ of the day leading up to the explosion.”
Vargas-Andrews asked for clearance to do what he’d been trained to do: to protect his fellow warriors and the innocent civilians around them from an impending threat. And he was denied. Twice