Howdy,
It’s 0338, and I’m wide awake. As my mentor, JVL, likes to say, “This is going to be dark.”
Last night, I had a debilitating headache. These migraines come quickly, knocking me out in short order. All the Traumatic Brain Injuries from Afghanistan, combined with my little accident a few weeks ago, have a cumulative effect. I get dizzy. I have to balance myself against a wall often. Daily, I wander into a room and forget where I’m going. Some days, I get lost in mid-sentence. It’s maddening. It’s a depressing thing watching oneself deteriorate like this.
I’m 45 years old. This shouldn’t be happening.
In 2008, I started going to therapy consistently for the first time. His name was Dr. Berry, a nice young Jewish (THE TRIBE) psychologist from NYC (his mother must’ve been proud). He was the first competent shrink I had. The few I spoke with at Moody Air Force Base were. . . a cluster f*ck (that’s a technical term).
Anyway, Dr. Berry told me something that often rings out to me when I get wobbly.
“Will, all these deployments, all this fighting, will take a toll on you when you get older.”
Well, he was right.
I’d like to think it was worth it. But, despite my best efforts, I often ask what was it all for? All the killing, the combat, and the partnering with monsters? When Iraq is considered the “success” story in the Global War on Terrorism —that’s GWOT, bruh—then I think it’s safe to say that the DoD didn’t precisely execute a winning strategy. Not that anyone is paying attention because nobody—and I mean not a single person—has demanded meaningful reforms to an organization that got humiliated by a terrorist organization without armor, artillery, or airpower.
But I digress.
I like to think it was for the Afghans I got out. That’s how I try to frame it. At night, when I’m alone and the demons come, I try to remind myself of the good that I and a merry band of brothers and sisters did for our Afghan partners.
Yet, it’s just a drop in the bucket. Let’s be honest: we betrayed our allies. We left them behind. Then, we blamed them for failing to defeat a terrorist organization that humiliated the “world’s most powerful military.”
Point of Privilege: Enough with this most powerful military in the world nonsense. You can be powerful and still be incompetent. You might have all the bells and whistles, but you should stop with the peacocking when you consistently lose wars.
Now, to make matters worse — G*d, this is going to get worse?—we refuse to take meaningful steps to improve things. For example, Republicans in the Senate—cough, cough, Cotton—threw roadblocks into passing the Afghan Adjustment Act (again!). The AAA (first acronym - boom!) would place Afghans living in the United States on a path toward permanent residency. Most of them are on humanitarian parole, which will eventually run out. Without permanent residency, leaving the country and getting a job, a loan, and a thousand other things Americans take for granted is difficult. It’s been nearly 2 1/2 years since the fall of Kabul, and we cannot do this one simple legislative act. An act that we did for our South Vietnamese allies, who we also betrayed many moons ago.
But it doesn’t end there (gulp). The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program is also running out of Schlitz. There are approximately 8K slots left for those in the cue. At the current rate, we will run out of slots by August. The Biden administration is asking for an additional 20K. This is merely an extension of a program that has saved thousands of Afghan combat interpreters. And, as of today, it will not be included in the spending bill.
There are currently 130K SIV applicants. Thousands of them have been approved by Chief of Mission (CoM), the first step in a maddening DMV-like bureaucratic process. However, these Afghans, the ones who put their lives and their family’s lives on the line for American soldiers, will be placed in limbo once we run out of congressionally mandated slots.
Not only did we betray these people, but now we are going to yank their lifeline back? Unbelievable.
This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. I won’t bore you with all of the other things that are going on in Afghanistan: the murder, torture, and sexual assaults of our former allies.
All of this fades into the background of American life. When people talk about Afghanistan politically, it becomes just another issue to calibrate your thoughts on carefully.
“I think Biden didn’t handle Afghanistan very well. But it was always going to be messy. But I like what he did on student loans and battling inflation.”
On the one hand, this is to be expected. Afghanistan never really played a central role in American life. It quickly faded into the background. Americans have other things to worry about, such as feeding their families, paying the bills, and obsessively keeping track of Taylor Swift (Swift/Kelce 2024).
On the other hand, Americans like to pound their chests about “supporting the troops.” But besides a few fantastic people, that is simply a bumper sticker. We cannot admit we lost a war, betrayed our allies, or try to learn from our mistakes.
And now, we cannot even pass simple legislation to take care of the people who protected Americans for twenty years.
How pathetic.
And combat veterans are tracking this betrayal. Daily, I’m inundated by emails, texts, and messages from disgruntled veterans. They are hurting. They are perplexed at how this country can effortlessly turn its back on the very people they were ordered to befriend.
“Support the Troops” met its match: American ignorance.
But, hey, “it was always going to be messy.”
Until next time.
Americans are decadent and do not have a care of the world except for what’s next for dinner and controversy du jour. the fact that fewer and fewer of us have served or have family members who serve make it such a distant concept. It is a big problem without any quick solution.
Humans have never been able to learn from history. Also, the Kings and Queens often times change history so we Peasants are none the wiser. That is the messiest part of our selfishness. And now we're in a time to aid a country that's our ali, and we can't even do that correctly. Until we Peasants rise up and force our hired help in DC to inact major changes, IMHO number one money out of politics, and now its infected our highest Court as well, we'll continue on this same road strewn with disposable bodies. Further disabled by our two-party only, and the electoral systems may soon be the death of a pretty decent democratic (Federal Constitutional Republic) country. as well.