“The whole point was to get rid of the Taliban and we didn’t do that. The Taliban will take over,” says a veteran.
Jason Lilly was a Special Operations Forces Marine raider who fought several battles in Iraq and Afghanistan during America’s longest war.
Lilly, 41, reflects on United States President Joe Biden’s decision to end America’s military mission in Afghanistan on August 31, expressing love for her country, but hatred of its politicians and blood. and waste money. Comrades killed and crippled in battles, they say, were invincible, forcing them to reconsider their country and their lives.
“One hundred percent we lost the war,” said Lilly. “The whole point was to get rid of the Taliban and we didn’t do that. The Taliban will take over.”
Biden says that the Afghan people should decide their own future and that the US should not sacrifice a second generation in an invincible war.
Read: Former US President George W Bush says Afghanistan’s military made a ‘mistake’
Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on the US sparked a nearly 20-year conflict that resulted in more than 3,500 American and allied military deaths, more than 47,000 Afghan civilians, at least 66,000 Afghan soldiers, And more than 2.7 million Afghans flee the county, according to the Nonpartisan Costs of War Project at Brown University.
“Was it worth it? It’s a big-ass question,” said Lilly, who had been on the front lines of America’s global war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly 16 years.
He said he deployed troops of faith there to defeat the enemy, boost the economy and lift the whole of Afghanistan. They failed, he said.
Describing his service and his approach in an interview at his home in Garden Grove, southeast of Los Angeles, Lily said, “I didn’t think a life on either side was worth it.”
Lilly isn’t the only one reflecting on America’s return after nearly 20 years of war. There are many Americans. Lilly and other veterans’ perspectives may help inform the country about the cost of entering the war and the lessons to be learned from Afghanistan.
Lilly’s opinion is her own and some veterans differ, such as Americans generally have differing views about a war that reformed women’s rights and in 2011 US Navy personnel in Pakistan. Killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
‘Vietstan’
Biden’s return has bipartisan support. 1 July 12-13 Reuters/Ipsos The poll showed that only three in 10 Democrats and four in 10 Republicans believe the military should remain.
Lilly and other Marines who served in Afghanistan and who spoke Reuters Compare this to the conflict in Vietnam. They state that both wars had no clear purpose, several US presidents in charge, and a fierce and non-uniformed enemy.
Part of Lilly’s support network is 34-year-old Jordan Laird, a former Marine Scout sniper who has described completing a war tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Laird and others have referred to as “Vietstan”.
“You have a deep understanding of the plight of Vietnam’s veterinarians who came home with lost limbs and completely and utterly thrown aside,” said Laird, who now campaigns to improve veteran care .
He served from October 2010 to April 2011 in the Sangin Valley in Helmand province, one of the most militant parts of Afghanistan. In its first three months, he said, 25 members of Laird’s unit were killed in action and more than 200 were wounded. . His best friend bled in his arms.
While in Afghanistan, Lilly said he understood why historians have called it the “cemetery of empires”. Britain invaded Afghanistan twice in the 19th century and suffered its worst military defeat in 1842. The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, killing 15,000 of its soldiers and injuring tens of thousands.
Lilly says she was particularly disillusioned with US military regulations in Afghanistan. For example, he and other units were not allowed to conduct night raids on the Taliban.
“Marines aren’t designed to kiss kids and pass out passengers. We’re there to wipe out. We can’t do both. So we tried and failed,” said Lily.
US Marine Corps referenced Reuters Asked about Lilly’s remarks, to US Central Command (CentCom), the military command in charge of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
In an email, Centcom did not comment about the criticisms of Lilly.
A turning point in Lilly’s thinking came when a Taliban prisoner told her that the Taliban would wait for the United States and knew that the Americans would lose faith in war, as the Soviets did.
“That was 2009. Here we are in 2021, and he was right,” Lilly said. “Why did we lose people? Why?”
Read: ‘No smoking, no shaving’ – Taliban restore old rules in newly occupied Afghan territory
returning from afghanistan
Back from the battlefield, Lily, physically fit and heavily tattooed, said she could not even look at the American flag for several years because she was so angry that her country sent her and her allies into an unstoppable war. He says he has seen many mental health counselors, but his biggest support network is fellow veterans.
Lilly is the vice president of the veteran-run Reel Warrior Foundation, which gives veterans a chance to break through the struggle to reclaim civilian life by taking them on fishing trips.
He said he was disappointed that the United States had not learned a lesson from Vietnam, where 58,000 American soldiers were killed in a war that failed to prevent communist North Vietnam from occupying the entire Vietnamese peninsula.
“We must avoid war at all costs,” said Lilly. “Don’t rush into the racket of war, the money maker, the contracts. Lots of people made a lot of money out of it.” He said that it took him many years to overcome his anger.
“I mean I knew what I was doing, I mean I grew up on Rambo. I wanted to honor my family in the sense that my grandfather fought in World War Two, I was the same way Wanted to step down and work selflessly, but that quickly turns into reality.”
One of Lilly’s experienced friends from Iraq and Afghanistan is Tristan Wimmer, who is also a Marine Scout sniper. Wimmer’s brother Kieran, a Marine veteran, died by suicide in 2015 after suffering a traumatic brain injury in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan.
Wimmer, 37, now runs “22 Jumps,” organizing fundraising events where he performs 22 parachute base jumps a day to raise awareness about the crisis of veteran suicide. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimated in 2012 that 22 American veterans die by suicide every day.
A VA spokesperson said via email that the department is dedicated to the physical and mental health of former veterans. It begins with a program called VA Solid Start (VAS), which ensures all veterans returning to civilian life are aware of and have access to an array of help and benefits. He is contacted thrice in the first year after he is out of the army.
Assistance under WAS is tailored to a veteran’s individual needs and includes access to mental health care and resources to reduce stress during the transition to civilian life.
Wimmer said of Afghanistan: “By any metric you choose to measure it, it was a futile effort. Getting rid of Al Qaeda or the Taliban – we didn’t succeed. Increased peace and prosperity for the Afghan people? We did not succeed.
“In the process we sacrificed a lot of assets, we sacrificed a lot of time, we sacrificed a lot, not only American lives, but Coalition lives, and especially Afghan lives, to achieve a lot, essentially a lot. No.
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