Local veteran asks: ‘What did we do this for?’
Those who served react to latest Afghanistan deployment
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It’s the intractable problem that three presidents have been unable to solve.
The prolonged war in Afghanistan is now in the hands of Donald Trump, and after his speech this week outlining his plans to stay in the conflict, some local veterans of the post-9/11 era are wondering if it will ever end.
“For the service member, after 16 years, a lot of us guys and girls are asking, ‘What are we doing? What is the point?’” said Ben Keen of McCandless, who served two tours in Iraq in the Army. “I have friends, six, seven, eight, nine-plus deployments in. They come back and ask, ‘What did we do this for?’”
In interviews this week, Pittsburgh-area veterans reacted to Mr. Trump’s vow to “fight to win” in Afghanistan, critiquing him for announcing a strategy they think could stabilize the country in the short term but leave the conflict raging for years to come.
Mr. Trump outlined his plans to keep troops on the ground to stop the Taliban from taking control of the country, destroy al-Qaida and prevent terrorist attacks against Americans. He didn’t directly call for an increase in combat troops, but senior officials said Tuesday there would be an additional deployment of up to 3,900 soldiers, the first of which could take place within days.
To Matt Landis, who served in the Army from 1999 to 2008 and did several tours in Iraq, military support in Afghanistan goes only so far. The 38-year-old University of Pittsburgh computer engineer said the United States needs to invest in infrastructure and education in Afghanistan to improve the country’s conditions generationally.
Mr. Trump said the “days are now over” of using the U.S. military to build democracies abroad, but Mr. Landis said the president’s military strategy will give Afghanistan and the American people only temporary security.
“The messaging is generally going to be far more important in the long term than weapons are,” said Mr. Landis, director of the Pittsburgh chapter of No One Left Behind, an organization that helps Iraqi and Afghan translators resettle in America. “Unfortunately [Mr. Trump] is the exact polar opposite of the messaging we want for people there.”
Winning the war of ideas is most important, Mr. Landis said, and Mr. Trump’s “brutal statements” about Muslims and immigration only provide religious extremists with more propaganda to recruit a new generation of fighters.
This is a sentiment that is echoed in the words of Joel Laudenslager, who has been in the Marine Corps for 12 years and has served deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Laudenslager, 30, of Clinton, said the best-case scenario is for the Afghan people to “find a way to nationalize, rally behind a singular purpose and seize some sort of greater picture,” which might take more than a military surge.
And the three options the U.S. has in Afghanistan — to leave, to deploy a massive surge of troops over decades of occupation, or to “muddy your way through and hope for the best” — aren’t ideal, Mr. Laudenslager said.
But two things, to him, are clear: Soldiers are ready to serve their country, and with that in mind, the war in Afghanistan has taken a toll on families all over the country.
“[Soldiers] do want to fight for their country, since you did technically join in a time of war,” Mr. Laudenslager said. “But no family is like that. No family wants the risk of their daughter or son to be lost in combat in some foreign land. It will always be tough.”
The U.S., at its peak involvement in 2010-11, had about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. There are 8,400 on the ground now.
Former President Barack Obama took criticism for his public withdrawal of troops, which is something Mr. Trump denounced in his speech:
“I’ve said it many times how counterproductive it is for the United States to announce in advance the dates we intend to begin, or end, military options,” he said.
Mr. Keen, who founded Steel City Vets, a support group for post-9/11 veterans, applauded that part of Mr. Trump’s strategy because “when you look at the modern-day battlefield, the enemy gains its information from news media sources.”
He also praised Mr. Trump for talking about a decisive victory in Afghanistan, something he said service members and their families are hoping for.
To leave the country in a more stable place, where terrorists are not able to roam free, is the most desirable option for Mr. Keen.
But the worst case for him and his fellow local veterans? Spending another few decades in Afghanistan with no real objective — making it a “war that no one remembers,” Mr. Laudenslager said.
Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1952, Twitter @julianrouth.