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Two years ago this month, when things fell apart in Kabul, Afghanistan, our Task Force Pineapple scrambled to save as many Afghan allies as possible. I was sitting at the kitchen counter with my wife in front of her, 7,000 miles away, furiously reading and composing urgent text messages in the Signal chat room. I was.
Suddenly I received a text interrupting my digital rescue frenetic flow state. It was my friend Brad, a former Green Berets I had worked with in Afghanistan. I read his message.
“Is there a way to go to a country near Afghanistan and help rescue people there?”
President Joe Biden talks about ending the war in Afghanistan at the White House dining hall on August 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
I shook my head in frustration and swiped the screen back to the signal room where the evacuation plan was underway. None of us were going to Afghanistan. Remote rescue was the best we could hope for. I’ll explain it to Brad when things calm down.
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I never did.
Less than a year and a half later, Brad passed away.
Brad didn’t die in battle. In October 2022, he was found unconscious in a Mississippi hotel room after a long downward spiral of depression and alcohol that began during the failed Afghanistan evacuation. He left his wife Dana and two wonderful children, Hannah and Chad.
Alcohol was an obvious accomplice, but his heart was shattered by a moral injury.
Brad was not alone. Thousands of 9-11 veterans are suffering from deep trauma caused by the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan and the systematic abandonment of Afghanistan’s closest allies. Moral injury comes from doing or witnessing actions that go against your values and deeply held beliefs.
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are slammed for mental trauma. For 20 years, a group of young American volunteers were dispatched each year to build close ties with Afghans to prevent a repeat of 9/11.
Disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal shows the way forward for US troops
In August 2021, in a few reckless hours, the same Afghan partner was abandoned, tortured, and murdered, while the cellphones of the veterans who had already experienced so much horror in the war were subjected to brutality. of images overflowed.
At the same time, some of the youngest post-9/11 operatives were deployed to Kabul airport and subjected to horrific human suffering. Afghan men are executed in full view by Taliban fighters, children are trampled under the feet of large crowds, fathers helpless, cradling their suffocating babies inches from the faces of Marines and paratroopers. I was trying hard to keep my composure without any means to help people.
They were redeployed to a country that had moved on, and the chain of command did not provide psychological counseling to process the horrors they had seen.
In March 2023, I warned Congress that if we didn’t mobilize resources to address the trauma resulting from the failed withdrawal, we would be on the front lines of a veterans mental health tsunami. . As if it were a signal, that same month he surpassed 88,000 calls to the VA Crisis Line, the most in veteran history.
Mother of US soldier killed in Afghanistan slams Biden’s foreign policy: ‘We are weaker now than ever’
After the devastating end of the Afghanistan war, the Biden administration is going about business as if nothing had happened. Senior State and Defense leaders continue to work closely with the Administration.
Two years later, none of the senior leaders have resigned or been dismissed. This deafening silence includes retired generals and admirals, who are similarly silent in public.
In the absence of organizational leadership, veterans are doing their best and stepping up to lead.
A young Marine named Joe Lord endured the trauma of an abbey gate explosion, left his beloved Legion, and invested all of his savings in a non-profit organization called Operation Arise Refuge. The organization provides a healing sanctuary for soldiers stationed at Kabul airport during the war. withdraw.
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A Marine spouse named Amy founded React DC, a nonprofit organization that spearheads Afghan resettlement to the United States, recognizing the domestic shortages plaguing new Afghan neighbors.
A former Air Force special operator named Travis founded the Moral Compass Federation, a non-profit organization of 20 veteran volunteer groups that work on veterans’ moral injury issues.
As for me, Heroes Journey, a non-profit organization,, Sponsored by the Gary Sinise Foundation, we are presenting a play I wrote called “Last Out: The Green Berets’ Elegy.” The entire cast are veterans and military families who travel the country healing their hearts through warrior stories.
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For post-9-11 veterans, one thing is clear: no one else is coming, just us.
Always open to the possibility. The veterans and their families I’ve shared my sandbox with are forces of nature, revolving around the organization’s leaders.
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