‘Feels all for naught’
Soldiers saddened by Afghan collapse
Two local soldiers who fought the Taliban in Afghanistan and watched the chaos there unfold on television this week said they are heartbroken over what they’ve witnessed.
Damien Gabis, of Economy, and Adam Zaffuto, of Imperial, both saw heavy combat, with Mr. Gabis suffering a head wound in a carbomb attack.
With images of the Taliban running wild across the country, even setting up shop in the presidential palace, both are wondering what their service meant now that all the Allied gains during a 20-year war seem to have been erased within days.
Mr. Gabis was an infantryman
with the 3-69 Armor Battalion in 2012 and 2013. He said he knew the collapse could happen but was surprised at its speed.
When the pullout was announced in May, he said the situation in Afghanistan was “tenuous at best.” He felt conflicted about the withdrawal. He knew that America could not stay forever. But everyone also knew that the pullout could devolve into a Taliban takeover — but not overnight.
“I wanted to believe that it wouldn’t happen,” he said this week in an email. “But in hindsight, my gut instinct was that this would happen. Not this quickly and not without a fight from the [ Afghan Army], but I thought that it would in my heart of hearts.”
He said the situation now is “profoundly sad,” especially the plight of women.
“I’m scared of quick and fierce retribution against our allies and women,” he said. “This feels like it was always an inevitability. Eerie shades of Saigon. Feels all for naught. Feeling helpless.”
Mr. Zaffuto, who arrived in Afghanistan in 2013 and fought in support of the Afghan
Army, shares the feeling.
Over time, he found himself largely fighting for the women of Afghanistan, who had made so much progress but now face a bleak future. As a new father of a daughter, he said he is angered and appalled by the collapse.
“I want to pull the covers over me and hide from the shame, to crawl into a depressive cave and hope the world forgets me,” he said in an email. “I haven’t eaten a full meal in a few days now and just feel sick. How do I ask for forgiveness in this moment? How do I ask the Afghan people who believed in a brighter future for their daughters for forgiveness as we leave them a reality where they exist now to be married off at 14 to a Taliban fighter?”
Mr. Zaffuto also takes exception to the notion, held by many, that the Afghans won’t or can’t fight.
He said in May that while Afghan units as a whole did need prodding to engage the Taliban, he also saw unbelievable acts of individual bravery. In one instance, he said, he watched on a surveillance camera as a lone Afghan soldier walked down a road while firing a machine gun, exposed to fire and yet fearless.
“After seeing the president’s speech I’m furious that he insinuated that the Afghans didn’t fight,” he said. “They took thousands upon thousands of casualties every year. I have held pressure dressings against their wounds suffered next to them in Helmand and prayed to whatever God would listen over the still warm bodies of Afghan heroes who fought and died for a Free Afghanistan. I live with the knowledge that an Afghan soldier caught a bullet that was meant for me and bled out in a tower 10 feet from me.”
He feels enraged at the intelligence community as well as President Joe Biden.
He said all the misery of the war seems to have been for nothing.
What’s more, weapons, planes and armored vehicles supplied by the U.S. and its allies are now going to end up in the hands of the Taliban or already have.
As for Afghan refugees, he said America now has a duty to take them in, “to face a disaster of our own making and say ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ To tell the Afghan people living here that the Dream of a Free Afghanistan, of a Free Afghan woman still exists.”
“How do I ask for forgiveness in this moment? How do I ask the Afghan people who believed in a brighter future for their daughters for forgiveness as we leave them a reality where they exist now to be married off at 14 to a Taliban fighter?”
— Adam Zaffuto