The Final Betrayal: Requiem for Afghanistan
By: Peter Hitzeman
Tags: Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, War On Terror, Veterans

The worst part of my job was not knowing. As the right-seater in a Predator ground control station, the majority of my job was gathering information; observing patterns of life, following persons of interest, looking for threats to friendly forces or civilians. Day-to-day, the job could be disjointed. We were tasked to missions or ground units sometimes at random, sometimes consistently for weeks.

But it was seldom we would be around to see the outcome of what we spent so much time preparing. We would watch a compound that we were told was full of terrorists for hundreds of hours, but when it came time to kick down the door, we’d be pushed out of the airspace in favor of “fast movers” and helos. It wasn’t personal, it was business. You don’t want anything in a dynamic situation that doesn’t absolutely need to be there.

The less mundane part of my job was something the military dryly calls “terminal weapons guidance.” We called it “warheads on foreheads,” or more colloquially, “putting the thing on the thing.” I became very good at it. I learned just the right amount of stick input required to counter the drift of the crosshairs from an orbiting aircraft; could place my laser spot in just the right location, within inches on a good day, to maximize the kinetic effect from my single Hellfire missile against any target. When you only get one shot, it becomes imperative to make it count.

The first time you guide a weapon to impact, the blast surprises you, like a Jack-in-the-box. You know it’s coming, and you know roughly when, but it still makes your heart skip a beat. Sometimes, that’s the end of the engagement. One bad guy, one missile, one dead bad guy.

On one of my first shots, the bad guy’s friends came to pick up his body and take him to the next village over. We followed the motorbike with his body slumped across the back for maybe 45 minutes, capturing zoomed-in color video, trying to determine if he was dead or not. It was an important detail for our After Action Report. We never really found out. I swapped out with another Sensor Operator, filled out my paperwork, and went on about my day.

Occasionally, the ground unit who coordinated our strike would call us up with a battle damage assessment report. One time, they told us that the bad dudes we had just eliminated had been found with Pakistani currency in their pockets. But the vast majority of the time, we’d be called in for a strike, do our job, and then go someplace else to assist another mission with reconnaissance or overwatch. It was the counterinsurgency equivalent of a speed date that becomes a one-night stand, and you never got her number.

Not knowing will keep you up at night. It gnaws at the back of your mind, chips away at your sense of certainty, fills your whiskey glass for you. It drags you out of church in the middle of a service. It distracts you in the middle of conversations that have nothing to do with the job, like when your wife is telling you about a funny noise her car is making.

The antidote to all that uncertainty is trust. Trust in the ground controller to talk you onto a valid target. Trust in the intelligence that spawned the mission or operation. Trust in the command structure to back you up, and in the civilian leadership at home to use your lethal power with prudence and wisdom. Trust that the brothers and sisters you watch over, day after day, are not being put in harm’s way lightly. Trust that killing all those people was important, and worth the moral cost.

The catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan these past few weeks is the final betrayal of all that trust. The trust of our allies, of the Afghan people, of the many thousands of veterans who have shed blood, their own and their enemies’, in the name of our country. The destruction of the reputation of the United States is exceeded only by the destruction of the peaceful Afghan people themselves. Their blood will be a stain on the soul of our nation forever.

That this outcome seemed inevitable from the start is a poor salve for the wound.

I grew up reading and listening to the stories of Vietnam veterans, most of whom took a dim and expletive-laden view of their fellow Americans who opposed our actions in Southeast Asia. Later, I came to know the stories of those who had protested that war. Radicalized as they were by what seemed to them the wanton and senseless destruction of a foreign nation, they found the underpinnings of their protests justified when Saigon fell in 1975.

I never expected to identify with both groups, as an adult. To feel the sense of purposelessness experienced by many Vietnam vets, alongside the righteous indignation of those who protested for peace. To be equally enraged at our inept leadership and apathetic general population as I ever was at the enemy. I was in no way prepared for this image:

The worst part of my job was not knowing. Now, the worst part is not knowing why. Why did we spend so much blood and treasure, just to shrug and walk away? Why did we raise an entire generation of Afghan women on the hope of peace and freedom, only to abandon them to rape and murder? Why did we make so many promises to the men of that country who served nobly alongside us, only to forsake them and their families when they needed us most?

Why has my country, which I love and which I have served for two decades, become so soulless, so callous, so wanton in its disregard for its moral obligations?

The fall of Kabul is complete, and with it, the state of Afghanistan has utterly failed. We have failed with it, and there will be no rescue. You cannot put the heads back on the babies that the Taliban has slaughtered. My friends who were blown up or killed will never be whole again. As a nation, we are right back where we started in the fall of 2001, except older, poorer, and more broken.

When I studied Korea and Vietnam as a teenager, I felt hopeful that we had learned the lessons of limited engagements against an unlimited enemy. After 9/11, I thought that we could be truly united in a cause. In 2011 in Iraq, I thought we would reconsider the idea of announcing our withdrawal to our enemies. Even when our intelligence was flawed and our strategies disjointed and faulty, I thought we might, through the determined persistence, moral might, and the unwavering professionalism of our men and women on the ground, create something good out of a series of world-shattering catastrophes.

Alas. History does not repeat itself, as the saying goes — but it rhymes. Ask me again in 40 years if we’ve learned anything from it.