Bee now says, “Excitement” of teenage Bee’s thoughts. “To be the dudes who got to open it first.”
Three more deployments in America’s longest war took away this feeling of luck over the next decade.
It came down to one night in 2008, in Afghanistan’s Helmand region. As a sergeant, Bee was holding the hand of an American spyer, who had just been hit in the head. A medic then opened the man’s throat to allow for airway.
Bee recalled, about what drove him to his final Afghan deployment. “I just want my guys to come back. It’s all that matters to me. They are my family.
As President Joe Biden ends the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan this month, Americans and Afghans are questioning whether the was worth the cost: more than 3,000 American and other NATO lives lost, tens of thousands of Afghans dead, trillions of dollars of U.S. debt that generations of Americans will pay for, and an Afghanistan that in a stunning week of fighting appears at imminent threat of falling back under Taliban rule, just as Americans found it nearly 20 years ago.
It was a difficult decision for Biden, Bee, and some American principals involved in NATO’s war in Afghanistan. The answer often comes down to parsing.
The first year of war saw the destruction of Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in Afghanistan by the Americans and the capture of the Taliban government which had been hosting the terrorist network.
It worked.
Douglas Lute (White House czar for war during the George W. Bush administration and retired lieutenant general) says the proof is indisputable: Al-Qaida cannot mount a major attack against the West since 2005.
Lute states that al-Qaida has been eradicated in the region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The second phase was the most difficult. U.S. fear of a Taliban resurgence when the Americans pulled out made it so that servicemen such as Bee were sent back in to continue their fight, collecting more injuries, deaths, and close calls.
Lute and others believe that the second half war brought time, allowing Afghanistan’s government and security forces to rebuild enough strength to sustain themselves.
In some ways, quality of life did improve. Modernization under Western occupation fed corruption. The infant mortality rate fell by half. In 2005, less than one in four Afghans had electricity. Nearly all of them had electricity by 2019.
The second half of war gave Afghan women opportunities that were completely denied to them by the Taliban fundamentalists. Today, more than one third of teenage girls can read and write, after their entire lives under the protection of Western forces.
It’s the second, longest phase of the war which looks at the brink of total failure.
The U.S. war against the Taliban left them unbeaten and failed to achieve a political settlement. The Taliban have taken control of two-thirds the country and the capitals of provincial governments. This is a step towards victory, before U.S. combat troops even pull out. The Taliban are gaining control of Afghan security forces that U.S.-NATO forces have spent over two decades building.
This rapid advance puts the Taliban in control of Kabul, where most Afghans reside. It threatens to banish the country from the Taliban’s strict interpretations of religious law, which would erase much of the gains.
Biden said last month that there was no “mission accomplished”, after answering a reporter’s question.
Biden quickly corrected his mistake and recalled the victories of those first few years. He added, “The mission was completed in that we… captured Osama Bin Laden, and terrorists are not emanating out of that area of the world.”
Richard Boucher was the assistant secretary of state in Central Asia for much of the first decade of the war. He says that the criticisms were not directed at the conflict but rather the fact that it lasted so long.
Boucher stated, “It was expansion of war goals, to try and create a government capable of stopping future attacks.”
America spent the most dollars and lives on the most inconclusive war years.
According to Brown University’s Costs of war project, more than half the 2.8 million American soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq in post-9/11 conflicts had to serve two or more deployments.
Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University senior lecturer in public policies, said that repeated deployments led to disability rates for veterans who have been deployed more than twice as often as Vietnam veterans.
Bilmes estimates that the U.S. will spend over $2 trillion to support and care for Afghanistan and Iraqi veterans as they age. These costs are expected to peak in 30-40 years.
This is on top of the $1 trillion Pentagon and State Department Afghanistan costs since 2001. Interest payments, which are likely to cost the next generation of Americans trillions more due to the fact that the U.S. borrowed instead of raising taxes to pay for the Afghanistan-Iraq wars, are expected to be higher than ever.
The war’s middle point saw the highest number of combat deaths, when Obama attempted a last surge of troops to defeat the Taliban. According to Pentagon and Costs of war project, there were 2,448 American troops and 1,144 NATO service members who died in Afghanistan.
A succession of U.S. commanders tried different strategies, acronyms, and slogans to defeat the Taliban insurgency.
Kandahar’s airportstrip was where Bee quickly set to work digging a Christmas 2001 foxhole. It grew into a post that could accommodate tens of thousands NATO troops.
Over the years, combat forces like Bee’s 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit have moved into hot spots to defeat the Taliban and establish ties with local leaders. Often, these gains were lost when the unit was rotated out again. Hundreds of U.S. troops and NATO forces were killed in Helmand, the province that proved to be the turning point for Bee. Taliban fighters retook the province on Friday.
Bee’s Afghanistan tour ended in 2010 when an improvised explosive weapon exploded within 4 feet of him. It killed two other servicemen who were standing beside him. Bee suffered his third head injury and was temporarily unable to walk for blocks without falling.
Was it worth it
Bee said, “The people whose life we affected, I personally think that we did them better and that they are better off for it.” He now works for a company which provides autonomous robots to Marine training at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune. Bee is also co-authoring a book about his experiences in Afghanistan.
He added, “But I also wouldn’t trade a few Afghan villages for one Marine.”
You will get different answers if you ask the same question in Afghanistan.
When asked this question by Afghans before the Taliban’s shocking sweep last week, they replied that it was more than enough time for Americans to allow Afghans to manage their own affairs.
Shogufa, a 21-year-old female, believes that American troops’ 20-years on the ground made all the difference.
Fearing Taliban retribution against women who break their strict codes, the Associated Press uses her first name only.
In her infant years, she was promised to marry an older cousin to repay a loan. She was raised in a family and society where only a few women were able to read or write.
Shogufa was a child when she came across a Western non-profit that had traveled to Kabul to support girls in Afghanistan’s leadership and health. It was just one of many such development organizations that arrived in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led conflict.
Shogufa prospered. She deflected the family’s attempts to marry her to her cousin. She found a job and is now pursuing a bachelor’s in business administration.
Today, Shogufa’s gratitude for all she has gained is tempered by her fear of losing everything.
As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, her message to Americans was clear. In good, but not perfect English she said, “Thank you for all you have done to Afghanistan.” “The other thing I did was to ask them to stay with me.”
