President Biden Should Talk About Afghanistan

Healing requires honesty. Learning requires leadership.

President Joe Biden attends the dignified transfer of the remains of fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware on August, 29, 2021. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

ON TUESDAY, FORMER CHAIRMAN of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Milley, now retired, was at the time of the withdrawal the senior military adviser to the secretary of defense and the president. He began and ended his opening statement with a promise to the “tens of thousands of wounded and other [service] members who suffer the invisible wounds of war, to help them get answers.” During his nine-minute-long testimony, Milley managed to blame everyone but the military for the bungled “retrograde” from Afghanistan—the political leadership over the course of ten years failed to generate a coherent strategy; the State Department ordered evacuation operations too late; the Afghan Army and government collapsed.

Those facts may all be true, but the military isn’t blameless, either. The noncombatant evacuation operation was ordered because our military operations, over the course of twenty years, failed spectacularly.

“The United States military, from private to general, did all that bravery and duty could ever do,” Milley intoned. I agree with him about the privates. But generals should be above shifting blame. Later in the same hearing, Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, now retired but in 2021 the commander of United States Central Command, admitted full responsibility for the loss of thirteen American lives at Kabul Airport during the evacuation. “I was the overall commander, and I alone bear full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate,” he said.

Milley’s blame-shifting looks like an attempt to protect the military from possibly damaging external forces. The retired Army general has been doing this for some time—he famously tried to protect the military from Donald Trump’s unconstitutional inclinations and politicization in the waning days of the last administration. Now it seems he’s trying to protect the military from criticism of its role in the twenty-year war in Afghanistan.

The military is in crisis now—spread too thin, recruiting too little, losing trust even among its own ranks. But Milley’s defensiveness isn’t what the military needs. It’s not what the country needs. And ‘It’s everyone else’s fault’ isn’t the answer veterans need.

The truth is that we are all to blame for Afghanistan. It’s time we admit it to ourselves before it’s too late. I know because I saw it all firsthand.

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I THOUGHT I HAD SEEN all that war had to offer. I witnessed the deaths of friends, subordinates, and valued allies. I bore witness to the monsters we were tasked to train. I tasted the vengeance from slaying our enemies.

Then Afghanistan fell apart, and my life became a living hell. I tried desperately to save our allies during our retreat. After the withdrawal, I joined a motley crew of heroes who worked tirelessly to ensure our government didn’t forget about our allies trapped behind enemy lines.

During the day, I commanded a 240-man squadron; at night, I organized an off-the-books global operation out of my office to hide, feed, and relocate our trusted Afghan allies. My mood swings were unbearable. I barely slept. When I did sleep, nightmares from years before tormented me. Toward the end of my command tour, I started having hallucinations.

First, it was just about one senior Afghan general who had flipped to the Taliban. I thought I was losing my mind. I didn’t tell my wife—I didn’t tell anyone. Not even the shrink I was seeing on post, even as the ghosts multiplied.

I white-knuckled the last few months of command, straining under the pressure, the moral trauma from seeing the Taliban destroy my life’s work just as ISIS had done years before, and the accumulated weight of twenty years of war.

After I finished my command tour, I voluntarily admitted myself to a military treatment program for combat PTSD, moral injury, and traumatic brain injuries.

Part of my torment was the rage I felt at the country I loved for abandoning my brothers and sisters in arms. I could learn to lead a normal life again—to be the husband and father my family needs. But for me and thousands of other service members, an essential part of that healing will require the United States to acknowledge its legacy in Afghanistan. Americans must confront the ugly realities of another lost war and, more importantly, make amends. And there’s only one person who can do that on behalf of all Americans.

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I’M ON THE FOURTH FLOOR of Strong Hope’s military treatment program in Salt Lake City, Utah. My civilian therapist is conducting another EMDR session. She places one buzzer in each of my hands and asks me to close my eyes. The alternating buzzers help activate both hemispheres of my brain. This allows me to process a military career full of trauma.

“I’m going to read back a sentence you wrote down during your intake. Do you remember what it was?”

“Every time I see Joe Biden’s face, I see my dead friends,” I respond sheepishly.

“Yes, that’s it. So go ahead and close your eyes. I’ll start the buzzers and I want you to keep that thought in your mind.”

After a few minutes of silence, she asks, “Are you ready to begin?” I am.

“What does that sentence make you think of?”

“That I’m in a room, alone with him.” My jaw and fists are clenched.

“Okay. Let’s run with it. What would you say to him?”

I begin sobbing uncontrollably. Tears run down my chin. “You broke my fucking heart into two.”

I sit in silence and begin to gather my composure.

“I voted for you. I convinced people to vote for you—the very people who gave you the election,” I say. “And what did you do in return? You abandoned my friends. People who protected Americans for nearly twenty years.”

“How is he responding?” she asks.

“He’s not. He’s shocked.”

“Okay,” she says gingerly. “Go ahead and continue.”

“You wanted to leave, fine. I get it. I don’t agree, but I get it. But the way we did it, it was wrong—and you know it. And then you go out and blame the Afghans for not defeating an enemy our own military couldn’t defeat either? And where the hell was everyone? Why was it up to me and my friends to rescue our allies? Where was the government?”

“Tell him how it made you feel,” she said, trying to steer the conversation away from the act itself.

“I feel ashamed. So much shame. I promised those men and women we wouldn’t leave them behind. I made that promise. And you know why? Because you and three different presidents ordered us to. Why? Why would you make us do that if we were just going to betray them like that?”

I sob again. The shame, guilt, and humiliation of watching helplessly as the Taliban hunted my friends from half a world away is pouring out of me.

“All the things I did for God and country. All the pieces of myself I left on the battlefield. All the compromises I made of my values. For what? Goddammit, for what?”

“What do you want him to do?” she asks.

“He needs to come in here and talk to everyone and tell them it’s okay. It’s not our fault everything went to shit. Look what these wars did to a whole generation of men. And nobody cares.”

“What else do you want to say to him?”

“Help us. Say something, anything about these wars. We need your help. We can’t heal without you. Please, God, someone do something to help my brothers-and-sisters in arms.”

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EVERY FRIDAY IN THE TREATMENT PROGRAM we would read our letters. Everyone was outside on the patio, all of them combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. We wrote letters to our addictions, to the civilians we inadvertently killed, to the friends we lost.

About fifty patients rotated in and out during my month-long treatment. Some of them struggled with alcohol and drugs; others struggled with suicide. Many were prone to violence, that sweet elixir that only those who’ve wielded it can appreciate. Some were ordered to attend treatment. Many had military escorts, often buddies, who traveled with them to the facility. You could leave voluntarily, but few did, partly because it would be a strike against you with your unit back home.

All of us had our demons. Some had buried them deep, so deep that it took thirty days in a mental hospital to jar them loose. Men wailed against the cruelty that visits those in war, like the agony of watching your best friend die in front of you while you try to save him. The nights on my floor were full of screams.

The letters we wrote helped us process the trauma and shame from a war America lost because it got bored. They helped us process our rage. We needed to get all that hate out on paper and share it with those who understood.

It was my turn to share.

Dear President Biden,

It’s been two years since you ordered us to retreat. We call it a withdrawal, but that’s what it was—a retreat.

Sure, a bunch of American service members performed heroically, but what about the Afghans who fell from the sky, clutching onto America as it flew away?

They were my friends. They were my brothers. Men who put their family’s lives on the line because they made a bet on us—on me. I was the one who pressured them to cooperate, using all the tricks I had up my sleeve from years of training.

And, boy, did it work. I could befriend an Afghan without missing a beat. I could talk about Afghan politics, history, and culture. The kids used to yell my name in the villages of Kandahar, “Turan Will, good.”

I could talk effortlessly with toothless Pashtun elders, senior Afghan government officials, and pilots. I loved it. I loved them. They were fighters. They weren’t perfect—corruption was awful. But they wanted something better.

We created a first-world military for an impoverished nation. We made them addicted to air superiority, exquisite intelligence, and the wonders of America’s logistics system. Then we pulled out and blamed them for not being able to operate effectively without them.

Throughout the war, we periodically threatened to leave. That type of rhetoric had effects on the ground. How often did I have Pashtun elders waffle because “President Obama said you were leaving”?

Not to mention Pakistan. We gave them billions of dollars in aid. Then, to return the favor, they killed thousands of American soldiers. They killed our sons and daughters, and we gave them money? When will anyone say this out loud?

We knew they were doing it! It wasn’t a secret. The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said it during congressional testimony.

Then, to top it all off, we started “peace talks” with the Taliban and excluded our allies. We forced them to release 5,000 prisoners and then blamed them for losing.

We knew the Taliban was violating the agreement. Everyone knew. Yet we handed over the country to them, a group still allied with al Qaeda.

Have we no shame? No decency?

Nobody is held accountable. Nobody talks about the war anymore. We can’t even admit that we lost! For God’s sake, after twenty years, can we at least be honest with ourselves?

We just want the truth. Every man in this hospital is carrying demons. Can we at least get one thing right? Can we at least be honorable now and admit it to ourselves?

Why do we need to hear the truth so badly? Because only then can we make corrections. A previous generation couldn’t admit that we abandoned South Vietnam, even blaming the Vietnamese for the fall of Saigon because they were corrupt.

Some things never change.

But it’s time they did.

Please help us tell the truth, Mr. President. Our military leaders won’t do it until you lead the way. They’re too scared. It’s up to you to help us heal.

I lit a cigarette and stepped back from the group.

“Thanks, Will,” said the therapist. “I know many of our patients share your feelings.”

Everyone nodded.

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THIRTY MONTHS HAVE PASSED since Kabul fell. Tens of thousands of Afghan combat veterans are still feeling the repercussions of our political, military, and moral failure. Cases of moral injury are skyrocketing. In March 2023, the VA reported its highest-ever volume of calls to its suicide hotline. Bases most closely associated with our retreat are reeling with suicides, murders, and substance abuse issues. The American people might be over our war in Afghanistan, but our Afghan veterans and their families aren’t.

In his 2020 campaign, President Biden ran on healing the soul of the country. Yet his first major national security decision ripped the hearts and souls out of a generation of veterans. Nobody has been held accountable for our hasty retreat, let alone for the twenty years that preceded it. Not a single senior Department of Defense official has stated the obvious: that the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their Pakistani masters humiliated the United States, NATO, and our Afghan allies.

Of course, the war isn’t entirely Biden’s fault. President Bush foolishly trusted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. President Obama provided the Taliban a lifeline by announcing a short timeline for his surge. President Trump forced the Afghans to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners while excluding them from the Doha agreement. The U.S. military squandered twenty years chasing ghosts into dark valleys without a sustainable strategy. The American people grew bored with a war fought in their names. We are all to blame for Afghanistan.

President Biden has an opportunity to lead on this issue. He could fully support the new Afghan War Commission, pledging to listen to its recommendations while assuring America’s veterans that he will fully cooperate with its probe, regardless of where it leads. He could charge retired American general officers to tour the country, meeting veterans to convey an important message to those in despair: This wasn’t your fault. You served honorably. And, unlike after Vietnam, we’ll learn from our mistakes so it doesn’t happen again.

By acknowledging and dealing with the disaster that was Afghanistan, President Biden could allow the Department of Defense to do the same. So far, the maxim that a soldier who loses a rifle gets in more trouble than a general who loses a war is proving tragically accurate. This isn’t lost on a generation of combat veterans who are fleeing the service in record numbers. It also partly explains the military recruiting crisis. American veterans are not so bullish on recommending military service, and neither are their families.

Biden could chastise Congress for failing to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act due to Republican intransigence. He could make the Special Immigrant Visa program a personal priority. He could champion his administration’s continued, quiet efforts to get our Afghan allies out. Thousands of Afghan allies continue to arrive on our shores legally. This good-news story would help Biden politically and, more importantly, remind American service members that we don’t leave people behind.

Nothing Biden says will ever erase the decades of mistakes that led to our humiliating retreat from Afghanistan. But victory in war is never guaranteed. Nobody promises you ticker-tape parades. There is. though, an unspoken promise that America’s veterans will be treated with dignity, respect, and honor. That promise remains unfulfilled for the 9/11 generation. Our generation of veterans doesn’t need more medals or cheap talk. We want to heal.

More money for the VA is great, and the PACT Act is appreciated. But we need President Biden’s help in holding all of us accountable for Afghanistan.

It’s time to start making amends for the damage we inflicted on a generation of veterans, their families, and our allies. It is time to talk about these wars before another generation of veterans is lost to demons from another lost war.