With a definitive end to a nearly 20-year involvement in Afghanistan slated for September, commentators are looking back on the country’s longest conflict, its jaw-dropping $2.261 trillion price tag, and the 2,442 American military personnel who gave their lives there. Many are asking, “Was it worth it?”
We would do well to question those who oversaw the war effort and the outlay of money into a country plagued by serial corruption. The sacrifices of our war fighters, on the other hand, were never predicated on the conflict’s outcome. Their treasured, timeless gifts of selflessness cannot diminish in worth — unless by our own inability to recognize their value. To remind ourselves of the meaning in those selfless acts of service, we should seek the perspectives of those who knew, and loved, the heroes who died in Afghanistan.
On Nov. 9, 2010, Lt. Gen. John Kelly received news that no parent hopes to hear. His son 1st Lt. Robert Kelly had died while conducting combat operations with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment in southern Afghanistan’s deadly Sangin district. Having written letters to and comforted numerous Gold Star families, Kelly told the Washington Post that he had often imagined their grief. When it hit him, he said his estimation had not “even come close. It [was] unimaginable.” He found his pain “disorienting, almost debilitating.”
Four days later, Kelly delivered an unparalleled Veterans Day tribute to post-9/11 war fighters. In so doing, he bravely demonstrated concurrent practice of mourning and honoring the fallen and the peril of allowing ourselves to tread into the realm of pity or regret.
Kelly spoke of the “tiny fraction, less than a percent, [who] shoulder the burden of fear … for the rest of us” and who “have performed remarkable acts of bravery and selflessness to a cause they have decided is bigger and more important than themselves.”
To the chattering classes who make out military service to be a form of victimhood, Kelly delivered an excoriating rebuttal. “No, [service members] are not victims but are warriors,” he explained. “And warriors are never victims regardless of how and where they fall.” Rather, he said, our war fighters “are the very best this country produces … and we as a people owe a debt we can never fully pay.”
Around nine months later, on Aug. 6, 2011, members of the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment were on a mission to kill or capture terrorist leader Qari Tahir in Afghanistan’s Tangi Valley. When Tahir’s fighters scattered, a Chinook was dispatched. It bore an immediate response force of 30 military personnel, including 15 Navy SEALs.
From the ground, two insurgents sent three rocket-propelled grenade rounds toward the incoming helicopter. A single round made contact with its rotors. All aboard perished as the Chinook, call sign “Extortion 17,” crashed and erupted in flames.
Back in the United States, SEAL Dom Raso lost 15 men from his unit. They were “some of [his] closest friends, [his] sparring partners, [his] shooting buddies,” he told the Team Never Quit Podcast in April 2018. The days ahead felt somewhat rudderless and troubling, but as he sat at Arlington National Cemetery, staring at a line of 13 caskets, Raso “truly underst[ood] the meaning of honoring those that have gone before us” and the need to “carry on their legacy.”
Honoring those warriors became Raso’s purpose as he strived to “live a life that the guys … that we’ve lost would appreciate, would back up, would love.”
“They did not die in vain,” Raso said. “Neither does anybody that has gone and served or lost their life. … They died for you to recognize how valuable their life was and for you to use it for the better — for you, for your family, and for the future.”
For 20 years, most American civilians were able to keep our eyes off the war. Our war fighters stared into an abyss we hoped to avoid. They fought in the eastern mountains and valleys that border Pakistan, in the arid desert and farmland of the Taliban’s Pashtun heartland, among the Dari speakers in the north, in the bustling capital of Kabul, and along the western border with Iran. Their sacrifices trace the arc of our ever-changing Afghanistan mission. Some died in our earliest military battles, while others perished while conducting reconstruction and stabilization activities. Still others died during the troop surge of 2009 and 2010 or while training members of the Afghan National Army. Others died in accidents.
Regardless of how and where they fought, our armed forces did so with a clarity of purpose rarely seen at higher leadership levels.
Members of our armed forces served to make an impact. Those who gave their lives did exactly that. The service members and veterans who fought beside them remember these men and women as heroes. If those of us who were spared the fight want the sacrifices of our fallen to have meaning, we must nurture and sustain them.
Today, find a quiet moment and look through the names of our fallen. Google search for their stories and mourn their losses. Then, let their sacrifices live on in the way that you honor their lives.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
