Sen. Devlin Robinson: Abandonment of Afghanistan shameful
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Watching as Afghans clung to the sides of American transports during takeoff only to plummet to their deaths as their allies flew off Monday is a spectacle beyond bearing. I once fought on the very ground their falling bodies struck.
I fought in Afghanistan, and many of my comrades did not return. We went there with a simple task: oust a terrorist regime and deliver the country from the grip of extremist zealots. We fought with the certainty that our sacrifice would bring a flourishing democracy to a people who had endured oppression by the Soviets and, later, by religious extremists with neither conscience nor imagination.
Marines don’t cut and run. That’s what sickens me the most about the administration’s decision not only to abandon the people of Afghanistan, but to do so in a way that sinks to the level of criminal incompetence.
President Joe Biden might seek to blame his predecessor, but Biden is president and he was the president who made the final decision to flee Afghanistan and leave its people in the hands of a regime so vicious that its very name — Taliban — has become a synonym for evil and oppression.
To understand what I fear for the Afghan people, you need to consider their condition when I first deployed there in 2003.
My Marine unit was sent to Kunar, a province along the border with Pakistan. It was a center of drug trade, warlords and endemic corruption. The region accounted for 60% of casualties in Afghanistan.
Kunar winters are atrocious, and we couldn’t so much as warm ourselves with a fire because it risked giving away our position. You ate only what you could carry, but you carried ammunition foremost.
Medicine for the locals barely existed. Opium tar and marijuana were the medication of choice, and mothers would blow opium smoke into the faces of teething babies to numb the pain.
Our mission was to secure the province in anticipation of a national election intended to transform Afghanistan into a democracy. Part of that work involved cautious meetings with tribal elders. Another part was helping children with bellies so distended we could feel the worms moving around just by pressing on them. Adults hobbled about on makeshift crutches because of untreated fractures from years earlier. Some were so covered with lice that the eggs dropped onto their shirts when they reached the clinic.
We would treat these people, make contact with their elders and tell them about democracy, and showed its connection to the kind of mercy our troops delivered. Then we would make a circuitous route back to our base, avoiding the one we took in for fear of improvised roadside bombs.
This was the condition of a people after decades of rule by thugs and ideologues.
When my deployment wrapped up at the end of June, members of my unit returned home and went their many ways. Some of us, me included, were redeployed to Fallujah in Iraq. While there, in October 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan, leading a field of 23 contenders.
When I dug deeper, I was grateful to know he’d carried Kunar, the place my unit had met with the elders and treated their youngsters.
Then, with many of my fellow veterans, I watched in despair as Afghanistan devolved into a maze of corruption and self-dealing. Drug kings flourished. Billions of our dollars vanished into a bureaucracy characterized by greed and deceit. The people of Afghanistan might have wanted democracy, but they had a government that couldn’t deliver bread and water because it was too busy enriching itself.
Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, became one of the top drug dealers in the nation while serving as a powerful politician. Characteristically, he was killed by one of his own bodyguards in 2011. In a place so devoid of trust, how could democracy take root, much less grow branches that reached remote and corrupt places like Kunar?
No one can know how our continued presence might have shaped a nation that has been a battleground since the days of Alexander the Great.
What we provided to the people of Afghanistan was not perfect by any means, but the vision of those men clinging to the side of a U.S. transport plane tells me they preferred to risk death than return to a land governed by the Taliban. Our shame is that we gave them no other option.
For my part, I volunteer with veteran charities. Speaking with brothers and sisters, some wounded physically and some spiritually, the question always comes up: Why were we there? And we ask ourselves what would have amounted to success in Afghanistan?
Were we trying to deliver small bits of hope to people with the idea that those small bits would add up to a larger vision for their country?
As veterans, we’re left with one proposition. We did our job and a large part of that duty was to be there for each other as we waited for statesmen to solve the problem. History will judge whether those statesmen did their jobs, but I can say we did ours. That will never change.
State Sen. Devlin Robinson represents the 37th District, which includes portions of Allegheny and Washington counties. If you are a veteran and seeking help, call the Vet Center at 412-920-1765.