God damn those people: Perspective needed on Afghanistan exit

Sparsely-attended Congressional hearing on Kabul Airport bombing 

I wrote this piece the day of the bombing at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, which took the lives of 13 American soldiers and injured countless more. I ran across it recently, and thought I'd share it today, on its third anniversary. 

AUGUST 26, 2021:  I tuned in to FOX today for news about the bombing at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan. I took a trip around the dial, as I often do, to see what other networks were reporting. CBS was covering it. NBC had Hoda and Jenna doing a tribute to kindness. I like kindness, but I think NBC could use some perspective on what's important to air during what seems like a historic moment.

ABC aired a rerun of the July 27 episode of The View, which opened with an extended clip from the most recent hearing of testimony from some capitol police officers about their experiences on January 6. I'm not at all surprised.

The irony wasn't lost of me as I listened to a capitol police officer testify, "...I feel like I went to hell and back protecting [his kids] and the people in this room," he said of the events of that day almost eight months ago. "But too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist, or that hell actually wasn't that bad...Truly nothing has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day, and in doing so betray their oath [sic] of office," he said in his rerun testimony, as hell played out in real time in Afghanistan. 

President Biden announced in an April 14 speech that the U.S. would withdraw from Afghanistan between May 1 and September 11. 

On July 8, Foreign Policy Magazine published an exclusive interview with Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. In it, he said that after foreign forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban's goal is to create an “Islamic government,” and “we will be compelled to continue our war to achieve our goal.” Despite Biden's promise of an "orderly" exit, it was clear that this could get very messy.

They knew they'd be in the middle of this potentially messy withdrawal when they'd televise eight very public and publicized January 6 hearings, which lends credence to the theory of governmental/media misdirection. When they tell you to look over here, always ask, "What's happening over there that they don't want me to see?" They're still trying to misdirect as I write, with Hoda and Jenna prattling on.

I wonder when, or more importantly, if, we'll see a Congressional hearing on our withdrawal from Afghanistan. I wonder what the soldiers who are in the middle of this awful bloodbath would say. 

Turning back to "The View," the "ladies" begin to give their reactions to the harrowing January 6 testimony. Still no word about Afghanistan. I turn it off in an effort to hold onto my breakfast. To run this episode today shows that ABC wouldn't know perspective if it crawled in bed and snuggled with them. 

There's a startling lack of perspective on display everywhere you look. Some people are just in the wrong profession. The list in this case includes ABC executives (The View is in their news division), NBC executives, people viewing January 6 hearings as infotainment, anyone in our government making decisions about Afghanistan, etc., etc. 

I just watched my husband go from robust health to taking his last breath in eight short weeks, during which we experienced incompetence, devastation, and hellishness. His little brother was found dead four days before my husband died, and I had keep it from him, for God's sake. 

The aftermath has been more stressful than I could have imagined. Within a week of his death, many of our appliances decided to break. Our home has been invaded by mice. I'm starting to look for locusts. I'm now the sole caregiver of our severely disabled son, a job too big for one person. I've never been so exhausted, so broken.

Planning his memorial service has been a nightmare because no one returns calls or goes to work anymore. I insist the service be outside because Covid's Delta variant is here, and I'm afraid the governor [Tim Walz] will make the event illegal if I do it indoors. My three closest girlfriends are dead, and my family, which we thought was built on a solid foundation, has exploded as if my husband's death were a firecracker being set off in a house made of toothpicks and paste. I've been planning his memorial mostly with the help of a few of his co-workers, whom I don't know.

The head honcho at the cremation place just called to say they FORGOT to take my husband's fingerprints, which I'd authorized to have made into jewelry for us to remember him by. Another loss in a hurricane of loss. 

Even after all of that, three weeks after watching my life partner of 40 years die and all of the resulting stress and pain I'm living through, I say to myself when watching scenes of Afghanistan, the people hanging from the wings of planes, mothers handing their infants to American soldiers, young women screaming for their suddenly dead husbands, "Those people have it so much worse than I do. God bless those people, and God damn those who made the decisions that led to this disaster." 

Perspective. We need more of it.

UPDATE: (If you Google hearings about the Afghanistan withdrawal, you get a lot of links to the hearing, held in March 2024, during which the Generals, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, etc., had their say. I had to dig to find a hearing with testimony from regular service people who were actually there.) The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a shameful, sparsely-attended hearing entitled, "During and After the Fall of Kabul: Examining the Administration’s Emergency Evacuation from Afghanistan” on March 8, 2023, notably just three months after Republicans regained the House. It's available on YouTube and was not cinematically produced by ABC. Witnesses included two soldiers who were there that day and several representatives of private agencies working to evacuate Americans and their Afghan partners, e.g., interpreters. One of the soldiers who testified--severely wounded that day--has a disclaimer under his name on the official Congressional Committee website that his testimony "...does not represent the views or opinions of the Department of Defense or U.S. Marine Corps." There is no similar disclaimer for any other witness or, notably, for any witness in the January 6 hearings.