Community MagazineOctober 2021

New Jersey Native, Major Joshua Zager 18 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE The images pouring out of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 15 th were heart-wrenching, as crowds clamored to escape from Afghanistan as the U.S. evacuation took place. We saw Afghani nationals and U.S. allies, women, and children desperate to board military planes flying out of their war-torn country towards safety. That day, the Taliban had cemented its victory over the Afghan army by taking over the presidential palace after Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani fled the country only hours before. Chaos in Afghanistan Many Americans did not anticipate such chaos. Weeks before, President Joe Biden assured the American people that there would be “zero” similarity between the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the 1975 flight out of Saigon, which resulted in 7,000 South Vietnamese being evacuated by helicopters, many clinging to the helicopters’ landing skids. However, the images we saw of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan belied those assurances: Here, too, Afghanis precariously held on to landing gears, desperate to leave, but instead, they fell to their deaths. Moreover, President Biden had assured Americans that the Taliban’s takeover was “not inevitable,” that he trusted the Afghan army’s capability to withstand attacks because it was “better trained, better equipped, and more competent [than the Taliban] in terms of conducting war.” Again, these were empty assurances, and Afghanistan fell to the Taliban only a month later. Marine Corps Major Speaks Out Perhaps President Biden was surprised by how quickly Afghanistan fell. However, Marine Corps Major and Afghanistan veteran Joshua S. Zager, 50, was not. He had sadly watched the slow but inevitable disintegration of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan for over twenty years, which he had initially helped to secure. “For me, it was equivalent to observing a friend with emphysema smoking five packs of cigarettes a day,” Zager said. “I knew how it would end for him. It’s one thing to train and equip the Afghan army, but it’s all for naught if there is no operational will and belief in a unified mission. So, no matter how much training and equipment we gave them [the Afghan government forces], the Taliban were always going to take over again.” What shocked Zager, however, was just how badly America’s disengagement ended. Operationally, he says, President Biden’s evacuation efforts were a debacle. Leaving Bagram airport in the middle of the night when the U.S. military had not started evacuating people not only demoralized the Afghan army, but it was comparable to barring the main exit of a building with a fire raging inside. Zagar’s heart also breaks for the thirteen U.S. troops and nearly 170 people - all victims MACHLA ABRAMOVITZ Arming the Taliban Former Marine Corps Major Speaks Candidly About the U.S. Exit from Afghanistan