[music] Tanzina: I'm Tanzina Vega, and this is The Takeaway. This week, president Biden announced that all US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September 11th, 2021, bringing the country's longest war to an end. Over the course of two decades, the war in Afghanistan has cost the United States trillions of dollars. More than 2,300 US military personnel have died and more than 100,000 Afghan citizens have been injured or killed. 800,000 Americans have served in Afghanistan since 2001, and here's what some of them had to tell us. Speaker 1: The Afghan Maura was not a very well concieved event. It's best I think to call it quits and to leave with as much grace as can be managed. My advice to returning soldiers is to keep moving, take advantage of whatever benefits you have available, and don't stop to rest or think about all of your experience in Afghanistan. Just keep moving, stay employed, don't drink, don't do drugs and help others however you can manage that. Michael: Michael Wentz from Houston, Texas. I'm just calling to say it was a Marine Corps veteran for eight years. I did two tours in Afghanistan. It almost doesn't feel real that we're pulling out finally. I didn't think I would live long enough to see it. I lost a lot of good friends over there. I'm just really happy to pull it out. No conditions, nothing. There was nothing to win there. James: My name is James I'm from Cherry Hill, North Carolina. We in the US have been engaged in conflict for almost as long as we've been a nation, many of which were unnecessary and unjustified. US wars are bankrupting the nation financially and morally. We can't even take care of the citizens that are at home, much less what we do to the families of the dead veterans and the mental or physical health of those returning home. As a nation, we can't afford to police the world. Our own history of global intervention it's proof of this. They working poor fight the wars for the benefit of the ruling classes. The US military was meant for the defense of the people and nation, not colonialism. Tanzina: Joining me now is Leo Shane, deputy editor at the Military Times and Tim Kudo, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to you both for joining me. Tim: Thank you. Leo: Thanks for the invite. Tanzina: Tim, you wrote an op-ed in the New York Times this week, referring to the withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan by September 11th. You said, "Although I have waited for this moment for a decade, it is impossible to feel relief." Tell us why. Tim: I think, like many of the veterans of my generation, we joined after 9/11, hoping to make a difference there, whether it was to avenge the attacks on New York or whether it was to help the Afghan people who were suffering from the Taliban long before we got involved there. I think of the many people that we sat under floors with over there, drinking chai and talking about peace and how we could achieve that in their village and the promises that we made to stay and remain and help them. Now we're leaving and we've broken all of those promises and that's just not something that I've done, but something that thousands and thousands of veterans did over the past 20 years there. At the same time, I understand that it's not a war that we can win, maybe it never was. I'm not sure about that, but we can't keep doing the same thing over there expecting a different result because it's just insanity. Tanzina: Leo, US troops aren't being withdrawn, as Tim suggested, because this war has really come to a neat ending. This is 20 years and there are veterans that served in Afghanistan or currently serving. I'm sure for them, this doesn't feel like a finished war, this feels more like an unfinished war. Is that right? Leo: A lot of conflicted opinions about this withdrawal. A lot of the veterans who I've spoken with felt like this was the inevitable and that there wasn't going to be some clean mission accomplished finale to this, that it was going to be a separation under questionable circumstances. A lot of veterans right now are struggling with that, what does it mean to not have this war anymore and to not have some of those promises fulfilled? Also the feeling of fatigue. A lot of veterans I talk to feel like this war was forgotten 10 years ago by the American public. If folks aren't paying attention, why are troops over there and why are they still fighting? Why are they still risking their lives? Tanzina: Tim, I want to dig into that point because I think, Leo, you're right. A lot of Americans, we don't hear about the war in Afghanistan, we don't see it on television, we don't hear daily updates about what's happening there, we don't hear about the fatalities, whether they be Americans or Afghans. As someone who has served and is a veteran, what does that do to the psychology of veterans? Obviously you can't speak for all people, but just in terms of what Leo's really pointing out there, this idea that this has been a forgotten war as well, not just the longest war. Tim: I got back from Afghanistan and I believe it's 2011. A few weeks after I returned, president Obama announced that they'd killed Osama Bin Laden. For me, having just come back from a war that was very fresh in my mind, to see people celebrating his death in front of the White House, in front of Ground Zero, while I was attending a memorial for the marines who died in my unit and seeing their families and interacting with them and seeing the grief that they'd left behind, there was just an absolute disconnect in that moment for me between the war that I had experienced and the war that Americans, as Americans, had experienced. It continued after that, I think a lot of us thought that it would be over then at some point and 10 more years passed. For me, during that time this specific valley that I was located in fell to the Taliban and they destroyed the US military and the Afghan military had to go in and bomb the buildings that the government had been located in to destroy the Taliban and try and retake that area. Everything that we had fought for, that men had died for, was completely for nothing. I think that it's been very, very difficult for veterans to have experienced that on their own. Tanzina: Tim, that's a powerful statement that it was for nothing. Tim: It's absolutely true. We lost to the Taliban there and we have known that that was coming for quite a while. Yet we continue to send people there to die for that. I like to believe that maybe at some point way back when, before Iraq happened, that it was possible for us to have achieved victory there, but you can't change the past. You just have to live with it. Tanzina: Leo, in terms of the folks that you speak to from military times, is that a sentiment that a lot of them feel what Tim is sharing right now? Leo: It's definitely one of the conflicts. There wasn't a pretty ending there, there wasn't a clear a finale. That's what folks are struggling with now as we're all looking at this news. Tanzina: Beyond that, the clear ending, is it also a question of that they didn't win or accomplish what they were there to do? Leo: It is that idea of what was the point? Why did we lose folks if we're walking away and so many conditions haven't changed and just what was achieved there? As Tim said, after the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the President referenced that in his speech yesterday, what was the point of staying? What was the point of the additional money that was spent? What was the appointed additional sacrifice? That's something that did not just these veterans, but the country is going to be reckoning with for a long time. Tanzina: Leo, one of the things that's been so difficult to observe about this war that's been going on for two decades is the number of times that US troops have been deployed. According to the Washington post, nearly 30,000 US troops were deployed to Afghanistan at least five times. There has to be some fallout from that, whether it's psychological, economic, five deployments just seems intense. Leo: This has been something that the military has been dealing with for the last decade, not just with Afghanistan, with Iraq as well, trying to figure out how do they balance, how do they make up for that time loss? Some of that is just time to recuperate, time to reset. A lot of that is missed births, missed funerals, missed time with family, time that has taken a psychological toll on top of just the physical toll that it takes. We saw that during these two wars increased use of the national guard and the reserves deploying in a way that they've never had in the past. That's folks who didn't receive the same active duty training and are now tasked with things like coronavirus relief efforts and security on Capitol Hill. There really has been a lot of focus on this over the last 10 years and, frankly, I can't say a perfect balance of how to reset these folks, how to recalibrate things and how to let the force completely heal before another major conflict develops. Tim: I would just want to add one thing to what we're saying, that's that the 30,000 troops that have gone over there five times or more, it's a catastrophic thing. I think any of us who've experienced that understand that difficulty. Obviously the VA system has been overwhelmed because of it. It also absolutely pales in comparison to what the Afghan people have had to endure on a day-to-day basis without any possibility of redeployment or any reprieve from the war that's been affecting their country. In some ways we should also put that into the conversation as well, I think, to your question about what's it like to come back and just have this tremendous disconnect. Tanzina: Tim, what's it like to return from war to adjust to civilian life? Tim: I think who I was before and who I was after I experienced the war is completely different. Yet many of my friends were unable to see that because so many of my mannerisms and my physical appearance and everything else was exactly the same. They tried to understand and empathize with it, but there is just no way to explain what war is to people. Inevitably, there's just this tremendous space that exists between you and the people in your life and everyone who comes after knows one person and everyone who knew you before knows another person and there's no way to bridge that within your friends and family. Tanzina: I want to hit two of the points that you made there, Tim, first of all the return is not easy. I can't imagine, especially to a country that hasn't gotten daily updates and is almost forgotten that we've been in this war for as long as we have. You made a point about the Afghan people. I want to play a call from someone we asked our listeners to call in and tell us what their thoughts were about this. I want to play a call and get your reaction to that, Tim. Speaker 2: I'm very concerned that announcing the withdrawal of troops in advance makes the last soldiers to leave targets for hostiles in their area. Also, I'm concerned that if we don't leave the leadership in that region with adequate power, then a power vacuum will create a situation where we have to rush in again within the next decade. Tanzina: Your thoughts, Tim? Tim: I understand those concerns and I empathize with them, but the reality on the ground is borne out. After 20 years we couldn't install a stable and capable government. Although we're indebted to Afghanistan because of what we've done there over that time, I think there's a general difficulty that Americans have with seeing trouble abroad, whether it's Uighurs in China, whether it's how North Korea treats its people, wanting to do something and knowing that that's the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing to do is also impossible and I don't think we're capable of really reconciling those two notions in our mind. Tanzina: Leo, after US troops are withdrawn, will the US be providing any financial support or other type of support to the Afghan people, government and or military? Leo: Yes, so we heard from Pentagon officials yesterday that the US taxpayers will still be helping with a lot of issues regarding Afghan security, financially at least. paying for some of the air force things, some of the personnel there. The President said the next couple of months are really going to determine what the long-term commitment is and what that means. He said that there will be a diplomatic presence there in Afghanistan, but was vague on what the actual military presence might be. Will it be just a traditional military cadre that's surrounding the embassy there? Will it be something more? Will it be some semi-permanent rotations there to continue to help with training? That all remains to be seen. It could still be a pretty fluid situation. The President also said that he's seeing the withdrawal from Afghanistan not as an end to the war on terror, that there's still plenty of threats out there and he's looking for ways to address that. We heard from the armed services chairman yesterday, Jack Reed, that he wants to see a permanent presence somewhere in the region, not in Afghanistan, but some sort of military response force. This doesn't end, this doesn't mean that the deployments and the pressure on the military is completely over. It just means the actual boots on the ground in Afghanistan are coming out. Tanzina: Tim, I want to get your thoughts on this because during the almost two decades of this war few, if any, of the presidents of this country have had direct ties to veterans in their own family with the exception of president Biden, whose son Beau was a veteran. I'm wondering if, when you look at that, does that give you any sort of solace, do you feel as though this president is more understanding and empathetic toward the veterans community and also what our armed services and our armed forces are being asked to do? Tim: I think most of the commanders in chief that we've had with the exception of probably President Trump have a deep understanding of what veterans experience and what their lives are like. They go to Bethesda, they go to Walter Reed. They talk with veterans, they're sympathetic, they visit overseas. There is that understanding. What President Biden brings that maybe others have but they just haven't talked about is the trauma that he's experienced in his life, whether it was losing his family when he was very young or losing a son Beau. There's things that happen in our lives that permanently and irrevocably change us and they never go away. I think people who've experienced trauma, whether it's war or otherwise, understand that and there's a common bond of empathy and wisdom that comes with that. I think that's something that President Biden has. Tanzina: We talking about re-entry really to civilian life. I'm wondering what the services are that are available to veterans when they come home. You mentioned Walter Reed and the VA, but is the VA where it needs to be and do returning members of the armed forces have the support that they need, particularly those who may need mental health services after all of the things that we just talked about. Tim: Things may have changed since I got out almost a decade ago, but I will say a couple of things. One is, during World War II, where I think there's some thinking that there was less incidences of difficulty transitioning then, in part, because it took so long to get back home. You would finish fighting in Japan or Germany, you might continue to be stationed there during peacetime for a while, you would get on a boat. The boat would take several weeks to get back, maybe stopping in Hawaii. You were with your unit, you were with your men at that time, and so there was an ability to decompress. When I finished the war in Afghanistan, we're on a flight a few days later, got home, released to our families within that day and then within about a month or two, I was out of the military with an honorable discharge. There was a brief class that you were supposed to take about how to get a job and how to do your resume, but almost nothing that I can recall about mental health or the difficulties of transitioning, or what the experience of combat that you've just been through is like. Then when you get out into the real world, again there's nothing once you're discharged. You have the opportunity to take part in services at the VA, whether it's mental health or otherwise, and there's veteran support organizations that are out there that are trying to help people but there's no actual coherent program, at least when I was in, to help you go from a battlefield back into the city streets in any coherent fashion. Obviously a lot of people fall through the cracks because of that. Some are able to find the services that they need, not all of them are, but I think that in addition to that we've medicalized the experience of combat so much, and there is actual psychological issues with PTSD and obviously many other experiences that people have, but there is also something just essential about the nature of war and of combat that is fundamentally human, that isn't necessarily treated by psychology. I don't know necessarily how to treat it. It's something I've negotiated and thought through and tried to work through the past decade. I think most people who've been at war understand that aspect of it, even if they don't see the need for psychological or medical services. Tanzina: What do you mean by that? I want to understand what you're saying there a little bit more, do you mean that there's a societal gap,, that people just don't understand what war really means and empathize with it? I think partly what happened with this war in particular was you had the events of September 11th. They were very traumatic, they were visual. It was huge. The immediate response to that, I think people understood in some ways, but then you have, two decades later, people just really in some areas moving on and some areas just not remembering that this is happening. Is that what you mean in terms of there needing to be more, just a sense of what we are doing as a country and what wars we're involved in? Tim: I think you're hitting on some things. When 9/11 happened, everyone was immediately in a global way, and certainly American way, traumatized and recognized in that moment that we lived in an unsafe world where anything could happen and there was no sense of fairness to how things went. Many people, particularly probably in New York or who were directly affected by the attacks, that carried through the rest of their lives and continues to carry through that. Many people though, faced with that kind of chaos, I think, turned away from it and they wanted nothing to do with it because how can you really go about your lives and, go to work at Starbucks and do your normal routine when you live in a world so fundamental unsafe? When you go to war and the best soldier in your platoon steps on an IED, and there's no sense of that. There's no way to justify why the best person in your platoon gets killed other than just luck and chaos and chance. It forces you to challenge a lot of your very core beliefs, whether that's religious beliefs, moral beliefs, beliefs about what it means capable of. It forces you to see the world in an entirely different way that it's impossible to come back from because once you've seen it, it's just always with you. I think that's one of the things that most civilians who have never experienced that in their lives, or have shied away from it for good reasons, because it is a horror, it makes it very difficult to connect with them and to have them share a worldview. In their minds, things are working pretty fine. They work hard, they are rewarded for it, they have families, life goes on just as they were promised when they were young. For many veterans, they just don't see it that way anymore. Tanzina: I want to ask you one more question about where we are today in this country. We are emerging slowly from a global pandemic, we're already seeing mass shootings happening across the country, just right on time as the moment we start opening up again. Domestic terrorism is on the rise in the United States and we suffered an insurrection at the Capitol back in January. One of the things that is emerging from what we know is that some of the people who were involved in the Capitol insurrection had either law enforcement or military ties in the past. I'm wondering, Tim, and I guess what I'm trying to ask here is do you see, as you mentioned earlier, some veterans come home and fall through the cracks. Is one of those cracks this radicalized thinking that leads folks to want to become involved in some of these conspiracies or wanting to throw over the government? We are seeing a certain percentage of these groups that do comprise of either former law enforcement or former military folks. Is that a danger of not having an adequate system for veterans to come home to, to people who have served abroad to feel like they have a home that they can come to and that we'll take care of them? Are these people who are just feeling really disaffected or is it totally something else that we can't define right now? Tim: It's definitely multifaceted. One thing start with is that a lot of extremists end up in the military to start with for a whole variety of reasons, whether that's something that they're looking to obtain skills through to return to extremist organizations and spread those skills, or whether they are disenfranchised and seeking meaning in their lives and they find that first in the military and then they return and maybe find it in those extremist groups. I think more broadly than that, because that's still probably a minority of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. There's this idea that you joined the military, you take an oath to support and defend the constitution. You do this in a very profound way, especially if you're deployed to war. Then it ends and nothing else in your life ever gives you that same sense of meaning that you had when you were in the military and especially when decisions that you were making had life or death consequences almost every day. Sent back into the real world without that opportunity, everything else is a little numbing. Many of the people who come out of the military, especially without any clear transition plan to get them out of that mindset and show them that there's meaning to be found in the ordinary aspects of daily life, they are constantly waiting for moments when that will come back to them. I think many veterans, for example, on a flight will think about, "What happens if there's a hijacking right now, what would I do? What happens if there's a mass shooting here, what would I do?" They're seeking those moments where life and death suddenly become intertwined and they're able to relive that experience. You see this in some of the names of these organizations, Oath Keepers, where they see themselves, even in civilian life, as adhering to this lifelong commitment that they've taken. Which I think is wrong, but you can understand mentally how you could get to a place where nothing else really matters compared to what you were able to do when you were 20 to 25 years old. I was shocked that the insurrection happened and I was disappointed, but I wasn't necessarily surprised that it was predominantly veterans that were doing that. Tanzina: Tim kudo is a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and Leo Shane is the deputy editor at the Military Times, Tim and Leo. Thank you so much. Tim: Thank you. Leo: Thank you. [music] Chris: My name is Chris. I'm calling from south San Francisco. I think it's about time. I'm all for it. You would think by now there would be some real concrete close to this one way or another, but it's still an open sore. There's been so much American death there. So much money has been poured into Afghanistan over the years. I think we should bring our troops home and provide assistance but from afar, let Afghanistan take care of their own business. Speaker 2: I'm very concerned that announcing the withdrawal of troops in advance makes the last soldiers to leave targets for hostiles in their area. Also, I'm concerned that if we don't leave the leadership in that region with adequate power, then a power vacuum will create a situation where we have to rush and again, within the next decade. Speaker 3: When I stepped onto a plane to Afghanistan just over 10 years ago, leaving a pregnant wife behind, I was confident we could end the terrorist threats in Afghanistan when the war and soon bring peace there. When I stepped back on American soil on the 4th of July, 2011, I felt like we'd made a difference. Now almost a decade later, it's clear ground forces in Afghanistan have done all they can to protect America and our allies, including Afghan civilians. Thank you, President Biden for respecting the sacrifice of US and coalition troops by drawing this long and costly war to a close. I hope our nation will grant asylum to the countless Afghans who helped us over the last 20 years, without whom we could not leave with our heads nearly so high. For those who risked their lives to support us, it's the least we can do. Ken: Hi. Ken from Ormond beach, I'm a veteran of the United States Navy for six years in the '90s. I don't believe that we should be in Afghanistan. I don't believe any armies or forces should be in Afghanistan. It's been a hot mess for quite a while, and I think everybody should pull out of there and let them handle it on their own. [music] Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information. New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.