For myself, a veteran of the Global War on Terror and someone who has spent time in Afghanistan, granted nowhere near as much as some, my emotions run the gambit from anger to dismay to horror. I can only imagine what the Afghans are feeling on the ground there, waiting to see if fate or luck will smile upon them. Unfortunately, it never had to end this way.
There is a deep sense of betrayal among so many who served and many who were injured, including the families who lost loved ones, whether to the war itself, this God forsaken evacuation, or the mental battles afterwards. These veterans, the soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors, all spent so much time away from family, gave limbs and blood and lives, and fought valiantly alongside one another in a war that was about preserving the very security of their fellow citizens. There was a duty felt among so many of us, that we weren’t there doing something abstract, like there was no mission. Protection of our far away family and friends WAS the mission. From a military standpoint, so many of us understood the mission was never about nation building. It was about stopping another 9/11 style attack on American soil and keeping terror at bay. It was about doing what had to be done to make the world a little bit safer.
Yet this is a side note to the real travesty. Unlike the average American soldier, who knows exactly where they stand in the hierarchy of importance to government officials, the Afghan people had no idea they were pawns in this game. The thousands of advisors and informants, their families and friends, neighbors and fellow tribesmen, were used like a ragged pair of dirty socks, not by the military, but by the elected officials and bureaucrats involved in the two decades long conflict in their country. They saw hope in the destruction of the terror group al Qaeda and the removal of the Taliban from the levers of Afghani power. They saw hope in the massive humanitarian effort, by hundreds of nonprofits, to bring some sort of equality for women in a country where they knew only subservience. The children were finally being given a proper education, and not the extremist indoctrination of ideology and hate. I know some of these humanitarians personally, and the task the aid workers had was monumental. But they succeeded. Just ask the female journalists who are now being hunted by the Taliban for their work over the last 20 years.
The world powers have also failed the Afghans. Not only did America, at the direction of an elderly president, abandon the very people who helped keep America safe, but so many coalition partners abandoned them too. From the United Kingdom to Canada, fellow partners in the War on Terror decided it was too much of a political risk to help America make Afghanistan a place where terror could not breed or be nurtured. They walked out on us because of a prior administration who felt it better to go it alone, than lead the world and bring our partners alongside to maintain some semblance of order among the chaos. Donald Trump shares as much blame in this whole debacle: it was his State Department who brokered the deal with the Taliban that Biden will not take responsibility for following through on. Both have alienated our partners on the world stage and made us weaker as a nation and ally.
We as Americans became apathetic to the Afghan plight, and took our own terror security for granted. The media had decided that so many “cultural” issues were more important to keep the masses embroiled over, than to take a look outside ourselves and see a world in desperate need of our wealth, knowledge, and helping hands. While we type away like mesmerized zombies on our phones and tablets and computers, the Afghan people are still farming with handmade tools. I know, because I have seen it with my own eyes. They fight hard for what little they have and most are content to live the lives they have. They didn’t want us to make their country America. They wanted us to keep them safe from the oppression of the Taliban and to allow them to live and thrive in their own little corners of the world. We were there to keep them safe. We were there to keep American safe. And now, at the whim of a foreign policy degenerate we have sent them back over the cliffs of oppression. Just ask Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense under both a Democrat and a Republican administration: “I still think he’s [Joe Biden] been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
I don’t have the words to describe how I feel at the moment. My emotions have run the gambit the last few weeks. The most glaring one to me has been awe.
- Awe at the sheer indignation and incompetence of our elected officials and bureaucrats.
- Awe at the resilience and resolve of the Afghan people to do what it takes to make it to safety with their families and friends.
- Awe at our President and Vice President not taking one iota of responsibility for the decisions they have made and the ineptitude of their actions.
- Awe at the ferocity with which people are entrenching once again to defend their sacred political cows.
- Awe at the boldness of some Afghan women who are staying the course in the face of overwhelming opposition.
- Awe at the blame being tossed around by everyone looking to lay blame at someone else’s feet.
Our President said, “The buck stops here.” No sir, you passed the buck to the Afghans and the prior administration. That is NOT what that phrase means. You took four days to make a statement after Kabul started to fall and the evacuation effort crumbled. You only came back from vacation when the political heat became too intense and then left just as hastily as the country still burned. Your Vice President is nowhere to be found, distancing herself for political reasons instead of getting her hands dirty and doing what is right. Your Communications Secretary had the out of office message on her email while Kabul was falling. It seems the ship is without a captain while adrift in a sea of chaos. And now 13 American Marines have paid the ultimate price for your unfathomable decisions, along with countless Afghans.
Honestly, instead of the buck stopping at you, you just picked it up, crumpled it in your hand, and slapped every veteran and Afghan hero who served in this god-awful war on terror, right across the face. I don’t care any longer what type of ice cream you eat. I don’t care about your folksy wisdom or whimsical one-liners. We don’t want your leadership any longer. You don’t deserve our followership. But I know, from the deepest recesses of my heart, that you don’t really care about either because you never knew what those things meant.
Reality Politics 