Two years ago, this month, as things fell apart in Kabul, Afghanistan, our Task Force Pineapple was scrambling to save as many Afghan allies as we could. I sat at my kitchen counter with my wife right in front of me, but I was 7,000 miles away furiously reading and crafting urgent text messages within our signal chat room.
Suddenly, I received a text that interrupted my maniacal flow state of digital rescue. It was my buddy Brad, a former Green Beret I’d served with in Afghanistan. I glanced at his message.
“Is there a way for me to get to a country close to Afghanistan and be on the ground to help get our people out?”
I shook my head in frustration, and swiped the screen back to the signal room where evacuation planning was underway. None of us were going to Afghanistan. Remote rescue was the best we could hope for. I’d explain that to Brad when things slowed down.
AFGHANISTAN WAR VETERANS KNOW SOMETHING CONGRESS DOESN’T
I never did.
Less than a year and a half later, Brad was dead.
Brad didn’t die in combat. In October 2022, he was found unconscious in a Mississippi hotel room following a long, downward spiral of depression and alcohol that kicked off during the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. He left behind his wife Dana and two amazing kids, Hanna and Chad.
Alcohol was a definite accomplice, but his heart was broken by moral injury.
Brad wasn’t alone. Thousands of post 9-11 veterans are dealing with deep moral injuries resulting from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and the systemic abandonment of our closest Afghan allies. A moral injury comes from acting on or witnessing behavior that runs counter to one’s values and deeply held beliefs.
Moral injury has slammed our Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans hard. For 20 years a group of young American volunteer service members deployed year after year, carving out deep relationships with Afghans to prevent another 9-11.
DISASTROUS AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL POINTS TO A WAY FORWARD FOR US MILITARY
In August 2021, within a matter of reckless hours, those same Afghan partners were abandoned, tortured and killed while images of the atrocities flooded the phones of these veterans who had already seen so much horror in war.
Simultaneously, some of the youngest of our post 9-11 service members deployed to Kabul airport and were exposed to horrific human suffering. Afghan men were executed by Taliban fighters in full view, children were trampled under the feet of massive crowds, and fathers held their suffocating babies inches from the faces of Marines and paratroopers struggling to hold their composure with no recourse for assisting these helpless people.
They re-deployed home to a country that had moved on, and a chain of command that offered them no psychological counseling to process the horrors they had seen.
In March 2023 I warned Congress that we were on the front end of a veteran mental health tsunami if we didn’t mobilize our resources to deal with the moral injury that had ensued from the botched withdrawal. As if on cue, there were over 88,000 calls to the VA Crisis Line that same month, the most In VA history.
After the gutting end to the Afghanistan war, the Biden administration marches on as if none of this ever happened. The Department of State and Defense senior leaders remain in lock step with the administration.
Two years later, not one senior leader has resigned or been relieved. This deafening silence includes retired generals and admirals, who are equally silent in the public space.
In the absence of institutional leadership, veterans are doing what they do best, stepping up and leading the way.
A young Marine named Joe Laude, who endured the trauma at the Abbey Gate explosion, left his beloved Corps, and invested every dime of his savings into a nonprofit called Operation Allies Refuge, which offers healing sanctuary to the service members deployed to Kabul airport during the withdrawal.
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A Marine Corps spouse named Amy recognized the domestic shortfalls plaguing our new Afghan neighbors and founded a nonprofit called React DC that is leading the way on Afghan resettlement in America.
A former Air Force special operator named Travis formed a nonprofit called Moral Compass Federation of 20 veteran volunteer groups taking on the veteran moral injury issue.
As for me, our nonprofit, the Heroes Journey, is performing a play I wrote, sponsored by Gary Sinise Foundation, called “Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret.” It is traveling the country healing hearts through warrior storytelling, with an all-veteran and military family member cast.
For post 9-11 veterans one thing is clear… Nobody else is coming, It’s just us.
I’ll take those odds any day. The veterans I shared the sandbox with, and their families, are a force of nature and they are running circles around our institutional leaders.
