President Joe Biden had been talking for about an hour when Steven Nikoui began feeling like he was sitting in the Colosseum in the movie “Gladiator” rather than at a State of the Union address.
“They’re all sitting in the stands and they’re looking at the beast down there and they’re getting amused. And I felt that. I rationalized it like that and I was a little sickened,” Mr. Nikoui said.
“These people ... they wouldn’t even have any of this if it wasn’t for someone like my kid or ... any of the others.”
He had hoped this would be the day that President Biden would say his son’s name, Kareem.
But when the president said “America is safer today than when I took office,” the gold star father reached a breaking point.
Mr. Nikoui likens the moment to “having an out-of-the-body experience.”
The anger and grief that had been stewing inside him for three years let loose.
“Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines! Kareem Mae'Lee Nikoui!” he called out.
He shouted his son’s name, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, and the name of the airport gate in Kabul where a suicide bomber killed his son and 12 other U.S. Marines on Aug 26, 2021, during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Then, he was arrested.
Mr. Nikoui, who had been invited to the State of the Union by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), a veteran, was escorted out of the House Gallery.
“I did have remorse,” Mr. Nikoui told The Epoch Times. “I felt ashamed.”
Mr. Nikoui said he was placed in handcuffs and escorted to a police substation at the Capitol. There, his mugshot was taken and he was fingerprinted. He said he waived his Miranda rights.
The officers who arrested him “were pretty good,” he said, but they gave him an ultimatum: “If you talk to us, you‘ll be out in an hour. If you don’t talk to us, you’ll go to the DC jail and see the judge in the morning.”
‘He Would Have Been Proud’
Mr. Nikoui said Kareem, meaning “generous and honorable” in Arabic, is a fitting name for his son.It’s exactly how his son, a proud American patriot, lived and died, he said. Something, he noted, that President Biden has never once acknowledged.
He said his son had made the ultimate sacrifice for the country he had longed to serve since he was 4 years old.
As a little boy, Kareem had a collection of “little army guys” he constantly played with, Mr. Nikoui recalled. His son joined the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as soon as he was old enough and he loved military movies. His favorite was “Band of Brothers,” a TV mini-series.
Kareem’s commitment to serve wasn’t a rite of passage as it so often is between father and son, Mr Nikoui said.
“I was against it,” he said. “I knew this would happen. I buried my head in the sand. I didn’t know anything about the military. I told him I don’t want to know anything about this. Just get out. But he didn’t want to get out. He said, ‘I’m going all the way.’”
Mr. Nikoui, a born-again Christian, talked to The Epoch Times about his son and his March 7 arrest at the State of the Union.
He also reflected on his relentless blame on President Biden for not following the Doha Accord established under the Trump administration, and on his ardent belief that his son, who was only 20 when he was killed, would still be alive if former President Donald Trump had been commander-in-chief when his son was deployed in Afghanistan.
“The only reason why I was even all right with my kid joining the military—because, like I told you I was against it—was because Donald Trump was the president,” he said.
The memories flooded back as President Biden touted his tenure.
From the Democrats dressed all in white to signify pro-abortion, to President Biden mispronouncing Laken Riley’s name in response to Rep. Marjorie Greene’s (R-Ga.) demand he say the name of the Georgia student brutally slain by an illegal immigrant, Mr. Nikoui described the many reasons that made him think “harder than ever” about the sacrifice of his son and the other fallen soldiers.
He thought back to the horrifying videos Kareem had sent him during his deployment—of young Afghani children begging the soldiers to take them to America.
“I saw this little girl just screaming, pushing herself up against the fence—screaming, ‘They’ll kill me, take me with you, the bad guys are coming,” he recalled. And mothers, “throwing their babies at razor wire. And women running into the razor wire because they don’t want to be raped and killed by the Taliban.”
He said Kareem, also a Christian, often spoke emotionally of how deeply pained he was by what he witnessed.
Mr. Nikoui believes that President Biden and his followers lack any understanding of that kind of pain. He said he finds it appalling that anytime someone dies or loses a loved one, the president interminably turns it into his own grief about the loss of his son Beau to cancer.
“He doesn’t ever seem to grasp other people’s losses or the destruction he is causing to this country,” Mr. Nikoui said.
As he was trying to keep his composure, President Biden waded further away from the one thing Mr. Nikoui had come in hopes of hearing—his son’s name.
Ultimately, Mr. Nikoui, a deeply religious man, couldn’t help but feel that maybe the Holy Spirit put him there—or maybe it was Kareem. “I know he would have been proud of me—definitely would have been proud of me,” he said.
Many have reacted with outrage to Mr. Nikoui’s arrest, mostly Republicans, who questioned that with so many outbursts, why of all people arrest a gold star father?
There has been a sweeping call for the charges against Mr. Nikoui to be dropped, including from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who called Mr. Nikoui’s arrest “petty.”
So far, the requests have fallen on deaf ears and the charges against Mr. Nikoui remain—misdemeanor protest of “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding.”
Silver Lining
Mr. Nikoui said he did end up with the one thing he showed up to the State of the Union address for after all.
“Yeah, so I got the transcription, and lo and behold, it’s in there, my son’s name is in there,” he said. “That’s all I ever wanted, you know, was just to have his name said.
“And then I didn’t have any more remorse. I felt like the Lord had blessed me because I’ve waited three years to hear his name and I wouldn’t have heard his name if the Lord didn’t convince me to stand up and say that.”
Although he planned a life-long career in the military, Kareem had a talent for designing video games and would often join his dad in his home office when he was on leave.
It was hard, said Mr. Nikoui, who owns a construction company, “not to turn our house into a shrine to Kareem,” but he didn’t want his younger son to “live like that—too depressing.”
His younger son, now almost 18, is as patriotic as his older brother, but Mr. Nikoui said he'll “never let him enlist.”
“This country is losing out on a lot of good warriors thanks to President Biden,” he said.
Mr. Nikoui said he still wants more answers about decisions made that fateful day in 2021.
“There’s only two people that have had any kind of criminal action brought against them for this disaster. Those two people are Stu Scheller and Steve Nikoui,” he said.
Of all the least talked about events of that day, what most salts the wounds of his incurable grief is the information he and other gold star families of the 13 killed learned: that the bomber had been under surveillance for days and was eventually identified by a U.S. military sniper team as a hostile threat. The request to take him down was denied—an order Mr. Nikoui believes came “all the way from the top.”
“Ever hear about him from President Biden? No,” Mr. Nikoui said.
He also talked about how “extremely agonizing” it was to learn that U.S. military leaders rejected an offer from the Taliban to grant them a 19-mile radius around Kabul to allow soldiers such as his son to secure the area from hostile interlopers.
Established under the Trump administration, it set a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, required the Taliban to cut ties with al-Qaeda, and prohibited any future international groups from setting up operations in Afghanistan.
Mr. Nikoui said he believes that President Biden callously rushed the evacuation for “political theater” purposes with what he deemed “absolute disregard” for the certain loss of lives that would result from it.
“We are still waiting for him to say any of their names,” Mr. Nikoui said.
The 12 other U.S. service members that were killed alongside Kareem were Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, Cpl. Hunter Lopez, Cpl. Daegan W. Page, Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak, and Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss.
The Biden administration didn’t respond to requests from The Epoch Times for comment for this article.
