Agony from Afar

This isn’t how it was supposed to happen; it didn’t have to be like this.

Over the last few months, I’d generally come to grips with the situation in Afghanistan. To everyone that’s asked, I’ve said that the only thing that would be more tragic and suck worse than giving up and wasting all the blood and treasure we’ve spent in Afghanistan would be staying in Afghanistan and having one more friend get killed or one more leg get blown off. And I still believe that. From a policy perspective, I’ve supported a responsible withdrawal from Afghanistan even though it hasn’t emotionally sat well with me.

But this isn’t how it was supposed to happen; it didn’t have to be like this.

For those who have been asking, thanks for reaching out. I don’t have anything good or helpful to tell you. I’ve spent much of the last two weeks sad. Mournful. Aching. Horrified. Speechless. Numb.

I can’t stop refreshing the news and Twitter feed. Every picture and video I find is just one more agonizing twist of the knife, but I can’t stop. I’m long past doomscrolling and well into despondent scrolling. I haven’t felt this helpless and hopeless since Ukraine’s corrupt Yanukovych government murdered their own peaceful protestors and then welcomed Putin’s invasion while they fled to safety. But even that was not quite so painful to watch from afar.

I can’t quite figure out what specifically, amidst this deluge of depressives, I am sad about. The tears come in waves and I don’t know when, why, or for how long they’ll flow.

Mostly, I think, I am sad for the Afghan people. Sad that we gave them false hope for so long. Sad that we convinced some to help us only to abandon them. Sad for the women and children who have experienced some semblance of normalcy only for that normalcy to be executed overnight.

I can’t stop thinking of the little boy wearing a miniature army uniform and a huge smile as he saluted me walking by.

I can’t stop thinking of the glum little boy whose face lit up with joy when he saw me and eagerly reached out to shake my hand.

I can’t stop thinking of the prostitute who sat at the dusty, blazing hot intersection of Highway 4 and Route Light with her baby every day.

I can’t stop thinking of the throngs of little girls flooding the road outside their school in the late afternoon every day while some of their mothers walked across the field to come pick them up and walk them home.

I can’t stop thinking of the woman I was unable to help as she tried to petition a corrupt system for ownership rights to her family’s land.

I can’t stop thinking of eating lunch with Ayinudine and dreaming together of the day when he is President of a united Afghanistan and I can come back to his gorgeous country as a tourist.

I can’t stop thinking of talking with Bismil at work only to find out that he was very sorry that he would have to leave work early that day because his daughter had died earlier that morning and he needed to be with his family.

Watching the hourly updates of the map of Afghan provinces the last two weeks has been like watching a miserably slow-motion game of Risk. But instead of plastic horses and men, I’ve been imagining real soldiers being wiped off the board and unceremoniously tossed back in the box.

Instead of Kamchatka and Yakutsk, the areas the Taliban took over were a lot more real to me. At first, the areas they captured were just familiar names I knew from maps. By Friday, they were capturing places where I have pictures, memories, and friends.

In some ways, I’m glad Kabul has fallen. During my time in Afghanistan, I often felt like I was patrolling under the Sword of Damocles; I’ve had the same feeling for the last two weeks. Every day I woke up to a new report on the Taliban’s march around Afghanistan and I waited for Kandahar and Kabul to inevitably fall.

And now they have. The Damoclean Sword has fallen and the suspense is over.

But, perhaps even worse, now we know what’s coming. And it’s sickening.

Iam sad for my soldiers, my friends, my comrades who have given their blood, their limbs, and their lives.

I’ve thought a lot about Teddy this weekend. This wasn’t the Afghanistan he died in. He died in a place where we were allied with the Afghans to fight the enemy; not in a place where the Afghans surrendered to that enemy after discovering we abandoned them in the dead of the night. Can it really be that the country in which he died no longer exists?

I only deployed there once, and for less than a year. I’m beyond thankful and Providentially fortunate that I was never forced to sacrifice more than a few gallons of adrenaline over there.

But, even that, I wonder — what was that for? The only substantive answer I can come up with is that I did it as well as I could for the glory of God.

But, if I’m honest, even that feels empty and deflating right now.

I don’t have enough emotional energy to be furious, but it is there, somewhere, deep down inside in the darkness.

I first felt betrayed in Afghanistan when President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Afghanistan. I missed the speech because I was out on a combat patrol. Hours after watching replays of his speech, we went back on yet another combat patrol. For some reason, the IEDs we passed didn’t go off; the Taliban saved their explosions for our Afghan partners who drove by a few minutes later.

I’m not as furious with the Taliban as I’d like to be. They won. They knew they just needed to wait us out and they did it. And now it’s their unchecked turn to ravage the spoils of war. But ultimately, you can’t hate a buzzard for being a cowardly scavenger anymore than you can hate a leech just because he was born a parasitic bloodsucker.

I want to be furious with the Afghan soldiers, but I just can’t be. You can only be kicked in the teeth and hung out to dry so many times before enough is enough. After years of valiant, if ineffective, fighting, being stabbed in the back and left for dead in the middle of the night is an understandable gut punch.

There are lots of policy discussions and analyses to be had at some point. Maybe we should’ve declared mission accomplished and pulled out in 2004. Maybe we should’ve left victoriously after killing bin Laden. Maybe we should’ve left last month. Maybe we should’ve waited until the fighting season was over and left in the winter. Maybe we should’ve evacuated civilians before evacuating their security. Maybe we should’ve pulled out with a coherent plan instead of in a hurry in the middle of the night.

Maybe we never should’ve tried to impose democracy on tribes. Maybe we never should’ve poured gallons of money on an inferno of corruption. Maybe we never should’ve pretended that Pakistan was an actual ally.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But, right now, I have no interest in hearing your armchair policymaking or forcing my mind over to that exhaustingly pointless exercise in futility. Now is not the time. We cannot yet reduce the galling incompetence and callousness displayed to a mere academic discussion or relegate it to a footnote or case study in an unread textbook.

I’m furious with our presidents. With Bush for losing focus, getting distracted, and forsaking “the good war.” With Obama for endless platitudes with no strategy, and for leaving us flapping in the wind while he made a good stump speech. With Trump for forfeiting to terrorists while negotiating from a position of weakness, for coercing Afghanistan to release the very Taliban prisoners that are now chanting “Death to America” on the streets of Kabul, for sentencing our allies to a gruesome death by refusing to give visas to those that risked it all to help us there. With Biden for bragging about his decades of foreign policy experience, campaigning to be the “grown up in the room,” bragging that “America is back” — and then turning half-baked campaign promises into half-hearted foreign policy, pulling out security before civilians, leaving the room for his vacation, and shirking responsibility whenever he dares poke his head out.

I’m furious with their presidents. With Karzai for fleecing his people for years and then having the gall to negotiate the transitional government to his hometown Taliban brothers. With Ghani for pledging to fight and die with his people and then immediately fleeing while they died.

I’m furious with our military leaders. With the colonels close enough to the ground to know the truth, but turned in deceitfully rosy storyboards and slideshows full of blatantly false green boxes to chase their OERs and stars. With the generals who escaped their cocoons to go do a round of misleading testimony on the Hill and dishonest talk show interviews about how we had “turned a corner” or were “turning the tide” without ever once thinking to suggest that, perhaps, there is an outside chance that the Emperor’s outfit may not be quite so glamorous as it might seem from across the Atlantic. With the ones who worried about “optics” and perception more than facts and reality. With the ones who told us we weren’t allowed to tell anyone that they were literally paying the Taliban not to ambush our fuel trucks so we could continue to fight against the Taliban. With all of them who started their next career as a board member or adviser to a defense contractor on the same day they began collecting their retirement pensions.

I’m furious with their military leaders. With the ones to whom we gave numerous 40-ft containers chock full of winter uniforms and bullets which they promptly sold to the Taliban to pad their bank accounts while their soldiers were left to beg us for winter uniforms and bullets so they could continue to fight the Taliban. With Adam Jan and others who led detachments of brave Afghans risking their lives to defend their homeland only to call the Taliban as soon as we left to report our movements and the details of his men’s next patrol. With the ones who inflated their unit’s rolls to collect more paychecks for themselves than they had actual soldiers; and with the ones who discovered that fraud and added a few dozen more soldiers to the list so they could get a little more money for their non-existent, ghostly, paper armies.

I’m furious with the contractors. The ones who charged $20 per “meal” so they had enough money to lobby the politicians against exercising any real oversight that might risk harming their golden goose.

I’m furious with our politicians. With the ones who called for accountability and oversight, and then did absolutely nothing when Their Guy was in charge. With the ones who waxed poetically about ending the forever wars but refused to do the dirty work of actually exercising their oversight responsibilities. With the ones who have turned a blind eye to the war except to have a few photo ops to cut a few thinly patriotic “support our troops” commercials when election season rolls around. With the secretaries who ruthlessly punished the rare general who dared to admit that their pet dandy little war may actually require “several hundred thousand soldiers” more than they wanted to admit.

I’m furious with their politicians. With the ones who flipped from senior government leaders to Taliban chiefs in a matter of minutes. With the governors who cheerfully welcomed their new terrorist masters into their palaces and offices. With those who had been planning and waiting for this moment all along. With the ones who fled while their constituents panicked in the streets.

I’m furious with you. With the people who never cared to know about even one of the 2,448 souls we lost there. With the majority of people I’ve talked to this last week who “didn’t know we were still over there,” or “thought we had already pulled out years ago.” With the people who are suddenly jumping on the Afghanistan bandwagon with their fashionable virtue signaling. With the people who are contorting to find a way to spin this to score points, oWn ThE oThEr GuYs, and show how their preferred sniveling rhetorician was so right and that other senile dunce was so hilariously wrong. With the people who are already bored with the still-unfolding tragedy and are moving on to the next, hopefully less-depressing, hopefully even more rabidly partisan issue du jour. With the people who never thought to get informed and involved or hold someone accountable until it was too late.

Because, now, it’s too late.