Dan Caldwell looks like a Veteran.

That struck me the moment he sat across from me in the Washington Examiner office, noticing his plain navy suit, short black hair, camo-colored watch, and serious demeanor.

“Wars are fought by humans,” he replied almost instantly, after I asked him what Americans are missing about foreign policy. “A lot of people think that wars have almost become like a video game,” he said, “but the brunt of these conflicts has been borne by actual real human beings, not machines.”

Caldwell didn’t always understand this, but he saw it firsthand when he joined the Marine Corps after graduating high school in Arizona. He spent two years in D.C. before deploying to Iraq.

“I was in an infantry unit, a member of Fox company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. We were spending a lot of time in Humvees and driving around, we were all over the country,” he said. “I was very... lucky for the most part, you know, to have a mostly quiet deployment. But at the same time, you know, I saw a lot there that kind of made me wonder. When I got back from Iraq, I started to learn more.”

Caldwell told me how he made a “concerted effort” to learn more about the conflict and its history. After doing so, he said it “became very apparent” that “the invasion of Iraq was probably one of the worst national security decisions in the history of the United States.”

Caldwell, like many Veterans, came to embrace a foreign policy philosophy that he said is “rooted in realism and restraint.” In his telling, “It’s not isolationism, it's not noninterventionism, and it's not weakening the military," but "if there is not a clear threat to our national interest, we should not be getting involved in a conflict.”

These foreign policy views led Caldwell to get involved with Concerned Veterans for America. He served as executive director of the Veteran's advocacy group for almost two years but then transitioned to a role as senior adviser.

Concerned Veterans for America, or CVA, works on three main issues, Caldwell said: reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs, addressing the growing national debt, and advocating for a restrained foreign policy and an end to what he calls “endless war.”

The national debt?

I asked Caldwell to explain because all the economic arguments aside, I didn’t understand what he meant when he said that debt could be a security threat.

“A lot of other military leaders have said that if we don't get our fiscal situation under control, then our economy is going to suffer and therefore our national defense is going to suffer,” he said. “The best way I can describe it is actually by telling a story from another country, and that's Greece.”

“The Greeks were in such bad financial shape, primarily because of their inability to control their national debt, that they could not afford fuel for their fighter jets. There's nothing that says that we, as the United States, could not reach that point.”

But while their debt advocacy is certainly interesting, CVA has made more headlines recently for their foreign policy efforts.

On Wednesday, the organization launched a massive paid media campaign to lobby the White House and congressional Republicans to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. The campaign is called “Honor Their Sacrifice,” and it urges policymakers to honor the sacrifice of our Veterans by pursuing better, more restrained foreign policy.

“Now we have a six-figure television ad that's playing in the D.C. area on Fox News,” Caldwell said. “And this is coupled with an intense grassroots push, contacting members of Congress, making phone calls, office visits, and so on.” He described impressive advocacy efforts, with over 15,000 Veteran activists working with CVA regularly, all across the country. The goal of this campaign, more particularly, is to end the war in Afghanistan.

American troops first invaded Afghanistan in 2001, in the wake of 9/11. The invasion was a response to the Taliban’s harboring of the al Qaeda terrorists who planned the terrorist attack. But we punished the Taliban and all but defeated al Qaeda in the first few years of the conflict. The decade since has been spent in a failed nation-building attempt to prop up an Afghan government that’s still faltering.

This brought Caldwell and me to the discussion of President Trump, who broke with long-standing Republican orthodoxy to campaign against endless war and nation-building in his 2016 campaign.

I pressed Caldwell on this because all his noble promises aside, we’re over two years into Trump’s presidency, and we still have roughly 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. This is, in part, because the administration’s attempts to broker a peace deal with the Taliban have broken down.

But Caldwell doesn’t think this is prohibitive. “Our view is that we should get out of Afghanistan, peace deal or no peace deal. It's not in our national interest to still be there,” he insisted.

He was high on praise for President Trump when it comes to foreign policy, at least.

“President Trump deserves a lot of credit for both campaigning on ending some of these endless wars and not starting any new wars, despite intense pressure from the national security establishment to do so.”

He said that Trump owes his 2016 election to his anti-war stances, at least in part.

“One of the reasons Trump won in 2016, especially in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, was because of his advocacy of a more restrained foreign policy,” Caldwell said.

“You saw that some of the counties that he flipped for Republicans in 2016 had higher levels of residents who were killed in action or wounded in action. And that you saw that those voters and their families were more inclined for President Trump.”

It remains to be seen, however, whether Trump follows through on his promises. Still, President Trump loves Veterans, and many of them are calling on him to end the failed war in Afghanistan.

In fact, Caldwell said that most Veterans agree with the work Concerned Veterans for America is doing. He cited a recent poll they conducted in April, which showed that 60% favor exiting Afghanistan, with only 30% in favor of remaining. This, Caldwell said, “is just not an issue where you see a 50-50 split anymore.”

CVA’s new campaign makes it clear that thousands of Veterans such as Caldwell have seen the cost of war up close and are clamoring for an end to the forever war in Afghanistan as a result. But only time will tell if President Trump heeds their call.

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Afghanistan Veteran and former Rep. Max Rose, D-N.Y. -- the Pentagon's new "COVID-19 coordinator -- joined Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last Friday for their first meeting with the service chiefs and combatant commanders on efforts to control the pandemic.

Rose's appointment to the newly created post of "Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense -- Senior Advisor, COVID" or "COVID-19 coordinator" surfaced in a long list of those named by the Biden administration to join Austin's team, first reported by Defense One.

Shortly after arriving at the Pentagon on Friday, Austin met with his senior staff, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, the acting service secretaries, the service chiefs and the combatant commanders, according to a Defense Department release.

Rose was commissioned in the Army in 2010 and received a Purple Heart for injuries he suffered when an improvised explosive device hit the Stryker combat vehicle he was in while serving with the 1st Armored Division in Afghanistan's Kandahar province in 2013. He now serves as a captain in the Army National Guard.

In March 2020, while serving in Congress, Rose was called up for Guard duty to aid New York City's response to the pandemic. He worked to convert a Staten Island psychiatric center into an emergency hospital for COVID-19 patients.

Rose, representing a Staten Island district including a part of south Brooklyn, served one term in Congress before losing reelection in November. Before his surprise appointment to the Pentagon was announced, Rose was in the process of filing papers to run in the crowded Democratic primary field for the nomination to succeed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

There was no immediate guidance from the Defense Department on the role of the COVID-19 coordinator, but the 198-page "National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness" issued by the Biden administration last week stresses coordination between the DoD and other agencies in setting up community vaccination centers in all 50 states.

The strategy states that the DoD "will bring its logistical expertise and staff to bear, with the Federal Emergency Management [Agency] in managing setup and operations" of the community centers.

"These sites will mobilize thousands of clinical and non-clinical staff and contractors -- including federal medics, Department of Agriculture staff, Department of Veterans Affairs staff, and Public Health Service Commissioned Corps officers and DOD personnel -- who will work hand-in-glove with the National Guard and state, territorial, Tribal, and local teams" in setting up the centers, the strategy adds.

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Isiah James was stationed in Afghanistan nearly a decade ago. But something the village elders would whisper haunts him to this day.

“They’d look at us and say, ‘You may have the watches, but we have the time,’” says James, 32, a onetime Army infantryman.

After 18 years of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, that waiting game continues, leaving some Veterans questioning whether the conflict — and the personal risks they took for their countrymen — were worth it. President Donald Trump, who has complained about wasted "blood and treasure” in Afghanistan and has vowed to pull all U.S. troops, now seems less sure of a full withdrawal.

“Afghanistan is an unwinnable war, an empire killer," says James, who is now running for a Democratic congressional seat in New York. "Ask Alexander the Great, ask the Russians. America is no different."

The Trump administration appeared poised to wrap up a conflict that began as a Special Operations campaign shortly after 9/11 and peaked a decade ago with a massive presence of 100,000 troops. It has since become the nation's longest war, costing in excess of $2 trillion.

Last October, U.S. diplomats opened up peace talks with Taliban representatives in Oman, negotiations that had built to once-secret meetings at Camp David. But on Sept. 9, in response to a Taliban attack that killed a U.S. soldier and 11 others, Trump called that dialog “dead.”

The violence has since escalated. On Sept. 16, two Taliban suicide bombers killed 48 people in attacks aimed at disrupting Afghanistan’s Sept. 28 presidential elections, in which President Ashraf Ghani is seeking a second five-year term.

Roughly 14,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. Some 2,400 U.S. soldiers have died in the war.

“In scholarship circles, there are roughly two camps on this war: one crowd that says ‘This never would have worked, and we should have seen that,’ and the other that says ‘It could have, but we’ve done it all badly,’” says Aaron O’Connell, an associate professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin, who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and served as special assistant to General David Petraeus in Afghanistan.

O’Connell says some of the mistakes made include the withdrawal of troops and aid when the U.S. decided to invade Iraq in 2003, which led then-President Hamid Karzai to “strike corrupt bargains with strongmen that delegitimized his government.” But perhaps the biggest problem was simply establishing a presence as “military occupiers” that fundamentally undermined nation-building efforts, he says.

Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., says launching the war was likely an error from the beginning.

“Sticking kids over there without the right training for the job at hand wasn’t right,” says Jones, director of the center’s Transnational Threats Project and author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan.” “It was a mistake to think we could use conventional forces for this mission.”

For those who risked their lives while tasked with improving the quality of life in Afghanistan, questions about wrapping up the war have become more intense as the Trump administration has debated officially ending the conflict.

“It’d be great if Afghanistan were now like Switzerland, a beautiful mountainous place that’s free and peaceful with no Taliban, but it’s not,” says Erik Haass, 43, a management consultant from Chicago and Veteran of two Afghan tours as part of the Army’s Chosen Company, which repelled a storied 2008 Taliban attack in the Battle of Wanat.

“I’m glad we got in and I’m proud of what we did,” Haass adds. “But I can also understand that after almost two decades of open conflict, it’s a lot to ask of our military and the American people.”

A recent Pew Research Center poll suggests that both the general public and U.S. Veterans agree things were not handled well. In a survey conducted last spring, 59 percent of the public and 58 percent of Vets said that, when considering cost versus benefit, the Afghanistan War was "not worth fighting."

“History will indict us to some degree,” says Paul Toolan, a Green Beret who was in Afghanistan half a dozen times between 2003 and 2012 and is now deputy commander at the 1st Special Warfare Training Group in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“Our motto while there was, ‘You can’t want it more than they do,’” says Toolan. “Our biggest problem is we were never able to step far enough back to allow the Afghan infrastructure to stand on its own two feet. But for our national security interests to be assured, the Afghans had to govern themselves. So we got heavily invested.”

For some Veterans, the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden should have spelled the end of operations in Afghanistan.

When President George W. Bush initiated Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct. 7, 2001, the stated aim was killing bin Laden. On May 2, 2011, that mission finally was accomplished in a nighttime raid on bid Laden’s redoubt in neighboring Pakistan.

Kyle Bibby, 33, of Jersey City, New Jersey, was a Marine stationed in Afghanistan on the day bin Laden died. “Right after that, my first thought was, what the f--k are we still doing here?” says Bibby, now a lead organizer with Common Defense, a New York-based nonprofit with a mission is to draw Veterans to progressive causes. “When we didn’t leave, it seemed like we were suddenly OK with an endless war.”

Bibby says he is lucky because he came back “with all my digits and body parts, but a lot of guys died and you have survivor’s guilt, you wonder if their sacrifice was in vain.”

Other Afghanistan War Vets say they grapple with the same doubt. Ian Eads, 37, another Chosen Company Veteran who did two tours in Afghanistan a decade back, says he would “never trade the experience for anything and I’d never want to do it again.”

Eads, now a police officer in Newport, Kentucky, saw his service as a job, one that sometimes meant killing people and other times meant befriending them. “I remember one Afghan that had a little shop at our base,” he says. “I’d trust him with my kids.”

But when he returned home, his survivor’s guilt sometimes had him contemplating suicide, he says. He has battled valiantly to find purpose and meaning.

“So many people were lost, it was so big a price to pay,” he says quietly. “If it’s going to end, I feel like that’s good. But is it that we’re just giving up, or did we fix it?”

For many Vets, another frustration stems from wondering if they’re the only ones thinking about the situation in Afghanistan. Unlike the Vietnam War — which ended in 1975 after 20 years and claimed 57,000 American servicemen — the Afghanistan War is being fought with a volunteer force.

“Because we don’t have a draft, the average American person isn’t impacted by these conflicts, but we need to look at how something like this 18-year war impacts families who are involved,” says Brooklynne Mosley, 35, of Lawrence, Kansas, who is a Democratic political operative in her state. She flew 190 combat sorties mostly over Afghanistan helping refuel Air Force jets from tankers.

“The people in Afghanistan don’t know why we’re there, and most Americans don’t know why we’re there,” says Mosley, whose little brother was 9 months old during 9/11 and now is entering college. “We’re going to have a hard time recruiting for more forever wars. We need to get out of there. We should be focusing our resources here on America and our crumbling infrastructure.”

Mission not accomplished in Afghanistan

Vets caution that the Afghan conflict defies facile pronouncements and easy conclusions. The very nature of both the country’s topography and its history virtually guaranteed that U.S. forces would be facing a difficult mission.

“It’s a difficult region to govern, due to the landscape, with lots of rural townships, so it’s a complicated case,” says Richard Brookshire, 31, of New York City, who is a strategist with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He served in Afghanistan in 2011 as a combat medic who trained other medics.

“As a Vet thinking about the potential end of the conflict, it’s just complex,” he says. “The ideologies propelling what’s on the ground won’t disappear because we leave. So, for me and my comrades, it doesn’t feel like we’ve accomplished a mission because it was such a complicated mission.”

Haass, the management consultant from Chicago, felt a patriotic call to action shortly after the Twin Towers fell. He was injured shortly after he was deployed when a mission involving clearing out a basement put a bullet in his hand and knee. He says he has no regrets.

“I seriously don’t think we had a choice, something had to be done after 9/11,” he says. “We made an honest effort at doing the right thing.”

James, the infantryman turned would-be politician, also is proud of his service but daily mourns those lost. "For me, Forever 21 isn't the name of a store in a mall, it's friends who ceased to exist after that birthday, brothers I'll never get back," he says.

James hopes there will be more national dialog over what happens next in Afghanistan.

"At this point, we're not going to bomb or shoot our way out of Afghanistan,” he says. “We can only talk our way out.”

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Calls to the Veterans Crisis Line have increased an average of 6% daily since Aug. 13

Congressional leadership of both the House and Senate Veterans affairs committees are expressing concern with the steep rise in calls to the Veterans Crisis Line in the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and recent bombing at the Kabul airport, killing 13 U.S. service members.

Over 800,000 Americans have served in Afghanistan since October 2001, according to the Pentagon, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says calls to the Veterans Crisis Line increased as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-August.

The Veterans Crisis Line is reporting an average daily volume increase of 6% for calls, 83% for texts, and 40% for chat messages since Aug. 13. However, some of the increased volume is due to broader promotion of the line as a catch-all resource and individuals who are not in crisis using it as a way to show general support for Veterans or seek options to donate to relief efforts.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., the ranking member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, said given the deadly Kabul airport bombing, he is requesting answers immediately from VA Sec. Denis McDonough regarding the VA’s plans and preparation to support Veterans during and following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Moran sent Sec. McDonough a letter last week asking for a response by Sept. 13.

"Given [Thursday's] horrific events and now predictions of further difficult days ahead, I need answers immediately to my questions. The planning to care for our Veterans must not replicate the disastrous lack of planning connected with our withdrawal from Afghanistan," said Moran in a statement to Fox News.

"It is our duty to honor the service and sacrifice of all those who responded to the attacks on our country since 9/11, including those who lost their lives this week. I will remain in close contact with VA’s mental health and suicide prevention program office and work to make certain they have every resource in place to meet the needs of our Veterans in crisis."

A spokesperson for Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said that the committee is constantly engaging with the VA so it can meet the "increased demand" for its services, including the crisis line.

"The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee is closely monitoring the situation in Afghanistan, and consistently engaging with the VA to ensure Veterans have access to critical mental health resources and the Department can meet the increased demand for its services," said Olya Voytovich, spokesperson for the committee.

"Any Veteran struggling during this difficult time should know that the VA is standing by and ready to help. Veterans in crisis should immediately utilize VA’s mental health resources, including the Veterans Crisis Line that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year."

House Committee on Veterans' Affairs Ranking Member Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., told Fox News that the Afghanistan crisis is already taking a "tremendous toll" on Veterans, stating that calls to the Veterans Crisis Line are up, and he expects it to continue to rise.

Bost also said he is working closely with the VA "to monitor demand for mental health care and other services as a result of this ongoing failure caused by the Biden Administration."

In addition, Bost is "calling on Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Takano to bring us back to D.C. so we can meet with Secretary McDonough and leaders in the Veteran community and do everything we can to mitigate the strain this disaster is putting on Veterans and their families. I want every Veteran to know that their service was not in vain, and the world is a better place for it."

However, despite the recent loss of American lives, members of congress are remaining hopeful about the "untold stories" of the life-saving work being still being done by heroic Veterans, who are working to help their fellow men and women in uniform and Afghan allies out of danger.

"These Veterans were heroes in uniform and are heroes still," Bost told Fox News. "I will never stop working to make sure these brave men and women have the help they need."

The Veterans Crisis Line is available for free, confidential support 24/7 by calling 1-800-273-8255 and pressing 1 or texting 838-255.

House Veterans' Affairs Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., did not respond to Fox News' multiple requests for comment.

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The cost of caring for Veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan could top $2.5 trillion by 2050, creating tough financial decisions for both the Veterans community and the entire country, according to a new analysis by the Costs of War Project released Wednesday.

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a Veterans care crisis, with disability rates soaring past those seen in previous wars,” said Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, lead author of the new estimates.

“This will take a long-term toll not only on Veterans, but the U.S. taxpayers that will bear these costs for decades to come.”

The latest analysis of the costs of Veteran care in coming decades is roughly $1 trillion over previous estimates by the group. Researchers cited “more frequent and longer deployments, higher levels of exposure to combat, higher rates of survival from injuries, higher incidence of serious disability, and more complex medical treatments” as the reasons for the higher price tag.

The group also noted that the increased demands are already putting pressure on the federal budget.

In fiscal 2001, before large-scale U.S. deployments to Afghanistan, mandatory Veterans spending accounted for about 2.4 percent of annual federal spending. By fiscal 2020, that jumped to 4.9 percent, even as the number of Veterans in America dropped from about 25.3 million to 18.5 million.

“The majority of the costs associated with caring for post-9/11 Veterans has not yet been paid and will continue to accrue long into the future,” the report states.

“As in earlier U.S. wars, the costs of care and benefits for post-9/11 Veterans will not reach their peak until decades after the conflict, as Veterans’ needs increase with age. This time around, Veterans’ costs will be much steeper.”

About $900 billion of the estimated costs will be for direct medical care by Veterans Affairs physicians and contractors. All post-9/11 Veterans are entitled to five years of free medical care through VA, while individuals with significant service-connected injuries can qualify for lifetime care.

The group estimates another $1.4 trillion for disability benefits payouts. Researchers also estimated about $100 billion in additional spending for VA staff to keep up with the increased demands of Veterans care.

Past analyses by the group have estimated that about 3 million Veterans served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, either in direct combat deployments or support roles. The median age of the group now is just under 37 years old.

The new report comes as the United States completes its full withdrawal from Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks which prompted the start of the war on terror.

“As the U.S. tries to close this chapter in its military history, an entire generation of Veterans and families will not be able to do so,” the report states. “The cost of these wars in blood, toil and treasure will endure for the next half-century.”

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"Why does Afghanistan matter so much to you?"

This is a question that comes up a lot in my interviews, most recently with a young reporter while discussing the actions of Operation Pineapple Express and other volunteer groups during the botched August 2021, evacuation of Kabul.

I was floored. How could these people not know why Afghanistan mattered so much to all of these Veterans?

Then, it hit me. They don’t remember why we were there. They didn’t even live through 9/11.

How do you explain this deadly lack of understanding to generations who weren’t born yet or were too young to understand what was happening? Or to those who were there, but have simply forgotten?

How can you make them understand that history is about to repeat itself, but it doesn’t have to be that way?

There is a generation of Americans that can never forget the images burned into their minds of planes striking the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, killed 2,977 people, and for the Veterans, it was personal. It happened while they stood vigil. American warriors, eyes narrowed and fixed on the smoldering rubble displayed on the television, made a single, silent vow "never again on my watch." 800,000 American warriors would deploy to Afghanistan, sacrificing youth, marriages, limbs, mental health, and in some cases, their very lives.

America built relationships and made promises during those two decades of war.

Al Qaeda's attack was largely due to bad U.S. ground intelligence and the inability of a partner force to counter them in their unrestricted planning and preparation. To prevent this from happening ever again, our combat Veterans and civilians built partnerships with Afghan police, soldiers, nonprofits, Afghan schools, and a myriad of other organizations. America asked the people of Afghanistan to stand up, reach for freedom, and oppose oppression in all its forms. Like proud parents, we assured them they could be whatever they wanted to be, and we would be there by their sides.

Then, in August 2021, we left. We broke those promises, squandered those relationships, and handed control back to the very oppressors we fought against 20 years before.

Why can’t Veterans forget?

Veterans know something most Americans don't. The enemy gets a vote in what happens next. The United States might be done with al Qaeda and ISIS, but they aren’t done with us. This enemy will follow us home.

There is credible evidence that al Qaeda is fully re-constituting right now. Foreign fighters from Syria, Iraq, North Africa, and even Southeast Asia are openly training on former Afghan Army bases in Kandahar and Helmand. The Taliban are fully accommodating and have gone so far as to issue visas to al Qaeda members that allow them to move freely throughout the country in clear violation of the Doha Agreement.

Additionally, Iran and al Qaeda have set sectarian differences aside and are cooperating to foment disruption in the Middle East. According to numerous Afghan Special Operations Forces, this al Qaeda is a younger, more capable force. ISIS-K is also in play.

There is an unthinkable yet highly possible scenario in how all this plays out. It's not a stretch to imagine that America’s enemies will launch another catastrophic attack on the homeland. Out of the ashes emerges a freshly mobilized U.S. blinded by revenge and short-term memory toward "bringing justice to the evildoers." Backed by American citizens, young warriors will load up again on C-17 cargo planes and fly back into the graveyard of empires to exact justice.

But this time it will be different.

Instead of Northern Alliance resistance allies waiting on the ground to receive and work with our troops, there will be thousands of forlorn, pissed-off former Afghan commandos who are well-trained and well-equipped in U.S. tactics and gear. They have been co-opted by al Qaeda after watching their children starve, salivating for revenge over unkept promises.

This September 11th, Americans should demand change and accountability from their government. It’s not too late to protect our homeland if we act now.

The U.S. government must resume all sanctions on the Taliban and redirect aid so that it gets to the people who are suffering and not the hands of the Taliban, who are likely misdirecting it for nefarious means. Credible sources tell us that millions of dollars in humanitarian aid is not getting to its intended victims.

The government must assume the care and management of Afghan special operations partner forces and other at-risk, high-impact Afghan security officials from Veteran groups.

And the government must support the Afghan National Resistance Front, which is the legitimate Afghan Government. They are the best option for standing against terrorism emanating from Afghanistan.

Even if America doesn't pull its head out of the sand, Veterans won't stop trying to intervene in this impending disaster because they know what's at stake. Without immediate action, the next 9-11 Commission testimony is practically writing itself.

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LUBBOCK, Texas- Amid the United States pulling troops out of Afghanistan one local Gold Star father remembers his son who served.

Tom Cannon said his son Mark Thomas knew he wanted to help protect his country after watching the 9/11 attack in the U.S. Mark enlisted in the Navy and became a hospital corpsman.

“We were very proud of him,” said Tom.

Tom said his son was deployed to Iraq in 2006, a week after his wife suddenly died.

“He had told officers not to tell his guys, as he referred to them that he was going to his mother’s funeral,” said Tom. “He says, ‘they’re going to feel sorry for me and I cannot do my job, and I need to make this deployment, I need this, it’s the only way I can do this.”

That same year, Tom said Mark received a call to be part of an embedded training team in Afghanistan to deploy in 2007.

“I was scared to death. I knew it was going to be worse than Iraq,” said Tom. “He had been and he had been there for four months and I got that dreaded knock on the door.”

Tom said Mark’s unit was ambushed by an insurgent attack and Corporal Ian Parrish who was in the same bunker was shot in the face. Tom said Mark worked instinctively to render aid while still fighting the attackers.

“One of the army medics said, ‘Hey doc, don’t do it. Let’s let them get the ambush under control’ [and Mark] said, “I can’t wait, he’ll die. He has a face wound,” said Tom.

Tom said he’s been following the news on what’s been going on in Afghanistan and said he’s disappointed on the way things have unfolded.

“My emotions and feelings have been all over the map,” said Tom. “I was bitter and angry first and was like, ‘Why did [my son] die if we are just going to give everything away and pull out like that?’

Tom said he hopes to get all Americans out of Afghanistan.

“I hope we don’t end up leaving some American citizens hostage. We deserve and they deserve to get out,” said Tom. “We owe a big debt of gratitude and we have a responsibility I think to get out Afghan citizens who helped us, the translators and others who provided a lot of intel.”

Tom said he’s looking at the positive that his son and others have done to help keep the United States safe.

“Our being there for 20 years has not been there for nothing,” said Tom. “We kept this country safe for 20 years from Al Qaeda.

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“How could this be, what came of my service?”

Hundreds of Veterans and service-affiliated personnel have drafted a letter to members of Congress and the Biden administration calling for action in the continued efforts of evacuating and resettling Afghan allies.

The letter — which was sponsored by #AfghanEvac, a non-partisan, all-volunteer coalition of more than 100 organizations and service-affiliated personnel — addressed President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-K.Y., directly, outlining their requests for aid.

“As the United States government continues to navigate the conclusion of its military mission in Afghanistan, we the undersigned, having seen firsthand the heartbreaking uncertainties that our Afghan allies, American citizens, lawful permanent residents, and their families face in their attempts to flee life-threatening circumstances, submit the following letter urging our country’s leadership to act,” the letter reads.

“The withdrawal of the American presence from Afghanistan has prompted unprecedented action by a coalition of Veterans, active duty military, frontline civilians, non-profit, private sector, academic, and other entirely volunteer organizations working hand-in-hand with willing partners within the Departments of State and Defense to assist in the evacuation and resettlement of the aforementioned individuals.”

Kicking off the requests made throughout the letter were those directed at the Biden administration.

The coalition requested that the Biden administration formally appoints “an interagency leader with tasking authority, oversight responsibility, and a dedicated staff to develop and implement a multi-year, actionable plan for evacuating our Afghan allies, including qualified P1/P2 referrals, and bringing them to safety,” no later than Feb. 22, 2022.

The group also called on Congress to help Biden achieve their goals, acknowledging that the effort to help refugees would be bilateral.

Also included in the coalition’s requests for Congress was the passing of an Afghan Adjustment Act, ensuring evacuees have a “full pathway to citizenship.”

Funds were also requested for the State Department and other U.S. agencies such as USAID to help with this process. Furthermore, #AfghanEvac wanted specific changes made to the Special Immigrant Visa eligibility criteria to include Afghan Special Operations Forces (and graduates of ASOSE courses) and the families of those otherwise eligible, mirroring the process for Iraqi applicants.

In the same breath, they also asked that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) appropriate funds for mental health and moral injuries suffered Veterans and others who participated in the 20-year war and the ensuing evacuations.

“As you well know,” the coalition wrote as an explanation for that specific request, “there was a related surge in requests for assistance at the Veterans crisis phone line in the days following our withdrawal and the ongoing mental health impact on Veterans and Afghans alike cannot be overstated.”

Requests were also made that the State Department facilitate the approval and immigration of allied Afghan refugees by approving virtual visa interviews and medical waivers in addition to providing support in the processing of SIVs.

Additionally suggested was that the Defense Department create and maintain “lily pads” in multiple countries that would allow evacuees to be safely and comfortably processed in their journey to the U.S.

Any current plans to close existing safe havens for evacuees should be stopped, the letter read. Instead, the coalition wanted an expansion of those locations to facilitate the resettlement process.

Of the 286 original signatories were 168 Veterans and 77 “frontline civilians,” with some signing as individuals and others representing groups such as Afghan Refugee Relief and Aid, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Task Force Pineapple, Human First Coalition and Truman National Security Project.

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Last week, many Americans were shocked and appalled at the contents of the Afghanistan Papers, a series of shocking assessments on our continued involvement in a long, costly war collected by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR).

The documents were mostly comprised of a series of interviews with top officials that many never thought would go public and were obtained by the Washington Post after a lengthy court battle that ultimately found the documents subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Although less discussed than the overall lack of honesty regarding our ongoing war in Afghanistan is the impact of involvement in this type of conflict on the Veterans who served there.

According to Jason Dempsey, a retired Army officer who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, “overall, it's largely been a failure. And that applies to almost every dimension of our effort in Afghanistan.”

He elaborated: “realizing that we were essentially on a treadmill, that very little progress [was] being made and that every single rotation was repeating the efforts of the rotation before that . . . without considering whether or not what they did added up to anything that was sustainable or contributed to a meaningful long-term goal for the sustainability of Afghanistan.”

Unfortunately for our nation, this sentiment is not new. Still, it deserves more considerable attention in that it can inform our treatment of the Veterans who served there, particularly those who struggle with mental health conditions and thoughts of suicide. Both Congress and the VA have declared suicide prevention to be a top national priority, yet thus far, both have been unable to make significant progress.

To this end, a brief history of our nation’s collective response to the Vietnam War and the impact this collective response had on the Veterans who served there, proves instructive.

In July 1978, Jeffrey A. Jay, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Family Research at George Washington University, wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine entitled “After Vietnam: In Pursuit of Scapegoats.”

In discussing some of the challenges he faced in treating Vietnam Veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Jay observed:

“My talks with Veterans convince me that their problems are not so simple, nor so easily addressed. The Veteran's conflicts are not his alone but are bound to the trauma and guilt of the nation. And our failure to deal with our guilt renders the Veteran the symptom-carrier for society and increases his moral and emotional burden. This burden isolates the Veteran and will freeze him in an attitude of perpetual combat until the issues of the war are confronted in the national conscience.”

Many historians and academics who have studied the Vietnam War, including Jerry Lembcke, a Vietnam Veteran, sociologist and author of "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam" (and who this author had the honor of learning from while a student at the College of the Holy Cross), agree that, collectively, society did an abysmal job dealing with the guilt and emotional burdens associated with the Vietnam War, the longest and costliest war the United States was involved in before Afghanistan.

To paraphrase Lembcke, as the Vietnam War became increasingly hopeless, the service members and Veterans put through the revolving door of deployments required to maintain our presence there came to represent something that many American civilians did not want to accept: defeat.

The acceptance of defeat has been hard for our current national conscience to accept in Afghanistan as well. If this were not the case, then indeed, the senior Department of Defense officials interviewed in the Afghanistan Papers would not have had any incentive to lie to the American people about the status of our progress there. Emphasis was repeatedly placed on winning rather than transparency.

Nowhere are the detrimental effects of this dishonesty more apparent than in the Veterans' suicide epidemic that continues to sweep the nation. Just as those returning from Vietnam struggled with feelings of social isolation concerning their inability to justify their war experiences in society, those returning from Afghanistan are suffering the same fate.

Lawmakers have made some progress toward addressing this issue. They recently approved the use of the three-digit number 988 as a suicide prevention number to assist those in crisis. They also introduced legislation to study the link between Veteran suicide deaths and other factors such as prescription drugs and traumatic brain injury (TBI), for example, they are missing the more significant issue of dealing with the collective impact of the Afghan War.

In other words, healing the nation may go a long way toward improving our Veterans.

The first step for government leaders is to accept and acknowledge that our efforts in Afghanistan have failed and that America is no longer brave in military conflicts abroad. As the Alcoholics Anonymous adage goes — admitting that there is a problem is the first step to recovery, and “only be admitting defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength.”

As Jay concluded in 1978, “it may well be that isolation, the burden of conflicted feelings, and not being heard makes people crazy” — not just the horrors of war. We must all do our part to deal with the unease of defeat in the Afghanistan conflict, most notably by listening more to the Veterans who served there, and acknowledging that they are not individually responsible for two decades of failed foreign policy. Doing so may very well save numerous lives and prevent entanglement in unwinnable future conflicts as well.

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On Monday, The Washington Post published a bombshell six-part series exposing the Bush and Obama administrations for knowingly and repeatedly lying to the American public about the war in Afghanistan.

This is nothing short of this generation’s Pentagon Papers, which exposed the terrible lie of Vietnam. But chances are you haven’t heard of the Afghanistan Papers, because impeachment is sucking the oxygen out of every newsroom, network and political website in America.

Have we lost our ability to be outraged over anything or anyone aside from Trump and his reality-show administration?

Here we now have 2,000 pages of previously secret documents containing interviews with more than 600 people, from decorated generals to intelligence officers to senior White House officials to ambassadors to aid workers to NATO allies to 20 Afghan officials, all telling the same story.

This war, 18 years old, the longest in American history, no end in sight, is unwinnable. It always will be. But the people who send our young men and women to die there, to suffer grave physical injuries, to return with PTSD that can’t be successfully treated or to commit suicide — at a record rate of twenty Veterans per day — have known it all along. And they have lied and manipulated numbers and have kept using our troops as cannon fodder to be seen as tough on the War on Terror and win second terms in office.

As Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the Afghan war czar under Bush and Obama, said in this report: “If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost. Who will say this was in vain?”

Every single person, apparently, with knowledge of how this war was conceived and is still — clumsily, defiantly, pointlessly — being prosecuted, is willing to say it’s been in vain.

As long as their testimony remained a secret.

The report, titled “Lessons Learned” — a tone-deaf reference to Vietnam — is the result of another investigation by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR. These “lessons” cost, unbelievably, $11 million, and ironically grew from the original task of investigating fraud and financial abuse by the Afghans.

The candor here is staggering, born of a belief by participants that what they had to say — the truth — would never be made public.

Nearly one month after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001. The objective was to dismantle al Qaeda, the terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government protecting it. Within months, leaders of both groups were either dead, captured or on the run.

Yet rather than withdrawing from the Graveyard of Empires, President George W. Bush decided to stay in Afghanistan — the beginning of mission creep — and pivot to invading Iraq. The SIGAR report is augmented by memos issued by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was shocked by Bush’s lack of attention to Afghanistan.

According to a Rumsfeld memo dated Oct. 21, 2002, the Defense Secretary asked Bush if he wanted to meet with Army Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill. Bush had no idea who that was.

Rumsfeld: “He is the general in charge of Afghanistan.”

Bush: “Well, I don’t need to meet with him.”

McNeill later told SIGAR “there was no campaign plan for Afghanistan,” yet Rumsfeld, no hero here, “would get excited if there was any increase in the number of boots on the ground.”

On May 1, 2003, President Bush announced, in a highly staged scene on an aircraft carrier, “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. That same day, in a press conference in Kabul, Rumsfeld said “major combat activity in Afghanistan” was over.

Yet four months later, at a meeting at the Pentagon regarding Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said, “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.”

Neither did our troops, just as in Vietnam.

What’s missing from this report — which The Washington Post says is the “sanitized” version of this national scandal, 90 percent of the names redacted — is the real motive for continuing the war in Afghanistan.

Presidential politics is one thing, but when seemingly every single person who talked to SIGAR says they don’t understand the mission or the plan of action or that there is no plan of action or that the numbers show the United States is losing, badly, and the longer we’re there the worse we’re making the problem — post-US invasion, Afghanistan now produces 82 percent of the world’s opium supply — what was the reason?

What is the reason? After $1 trillion spent and thousands of lives lost, why?

The Afghanistan papers read apolitically; extreme frustration and anger are expressed at Bush and Obama, both of whom led administrations that insisted on lying to the American public, on spinning numbers or making them up, on insisting military commanders tell the press that we were winning as we were losing.

McNeill said when he became NATO commander in 2007, “There was no NATO campaign plan . . . I tried to get someone to define what winning meant, even before I went over, and nobody could.”

Yet in 2008, Bush increased US troops by 10,000, to a total of 31,000. That same year, Barack Obama ran on getting all US troops out of Afghanistan; in his first year as president, Obama increased troop levels by 30,000. When asked why, Obama’s go-to reply was always to “disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat al Qaeda.”

But as the SIGAR report makes clear, al Qaeda was long gone, and the Taliban had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL who served as a White House staffer under Bush and Obama, told SIGAR that “no one asked” why this was.

By 2010, the US and NATO casualty rate hit another high. Yet every US military and administration official was told to hit one message hard: Progress, progress, progress.

Army Lt. General David Rodriguez, at a press conference in Kabul that year: “We are steadily making deliberate progress.”

Army Gen. David Petraeus, testifying before Congress in 2011: “Important but hard-fought progress.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, on the ground in 2012: “Significant progress.” He had just avoided death by suicide bomb.

An official from the National Security Council told SIGAR that there was tremendous pressure from the Obama administration and the Pentagon to produce data that proved the US was succeeding, even though “it was impossible to create good metrics.”

So, the official said, here’s how they spun, absurdly, bad news into good: A rise in successful suicide attacks? That meant the Taliban was too afraid of US forces to fight fair.

A rise in US troop deaths was framed, in loathsome and cynical terms, as “proof” we were fighting with the enemy.

As if that is not the definition of armed combat.

Meanwhile, American special forces attempting to train Afghan police and security, according to the report, “hated” them, with one US soldier calling them “awful — the bottom of the barrel in the country that is already at the bottom of the barrel.” Another said that one-third of the recruits were “drug addicts or Taliban.”

In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US spent over $64 billion on Afghan forces, but at least 30,000 of those were “ghost soldiers” — they did not exist. One contractor told SIGAR he was ordered to spend $3 million per day on one tiny province and asked a congressman on a fact-finding mission if he’d ever be able to do that in the US.

The answer: “Hell, no.”

The response: “Well, sir, that’s what you just obligated us to spend, and I’m doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.”

Another source reports that the level of graft and corruption is “fatal” to our chances. Everyone in a power position there is on the take, from judges to police to government workers. The result? Afghans look at what the US is doing and think, If this is democracy, bring us back the Taliban.

Bob Crowley, retired Army colonel, counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan from 2013-2014:

“Truth was rarely welcome . . . There was more room to share bad news if it was small — we’re running over kids with our [armored vehicles] . . .”

This, by the way, is how easily warped perspective becomes, that the accidental deaths of innocent children by US forces is insignificant.

“But when we tried to air larger strategic concerns,” Crowley continued, “about the willingness, capacity or corruption of the Afghan government, it was clear it wasn’t welcome.”

This time last year, President Trump announced the withdrawal of nearly half our 14,000 soldiers from Afghanistan. In October, The New York Times reported the drawdown was closer to 2,000.

Clearly, no end is in sight.

The Afghanistan papers should become a lead talking point on cable news and the Sunday shows. Every candidate on the presidential debate stage should be asked if they’ve read them, what should happen to those who lied to the American people, and what their plan is for leaving, their premise is for staying? Has Trump read them, or been briefed? Has this changed his plans for engaging?

And Congress, once the high theater of impeachment is over, should open an investigation worthy of the grievousness we know about and root out what we don’t — though that may be too much to hope, fatigued as they no doubt will be by scandal and outrage.

So much for learning our lesson.

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'This is a very grim reality, not just for the United States but for so many of our partners around the world,' lawmaker says on 'The Story'

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the first female combat Veteran elected to the U.S. Senate, condemned the potential collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban, as the insurgent group gains control of one provincial capital after another in short order ahead of President Biden's August 31 troop withdrawal date.

Ernst blamed the president for the conditions on the ground, as the Pentagon engaged in a mission to help evacuate Americans from the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

She told "The Story" that while Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon's spokesman, has made himself available to reporters multiple times this week, Biden conversely remained silent on the issue Friday as he left Washington for a weekend vacation at Camp David near Sabillasville, Md.

"This is a very grim reality, not just for the United States but for so many of our partners around the world to see Afghanistan fall like this. It is all on President Biden's shoulders," Ernst said Friday.

"This rapid and haphazard withdrawal of American troops -- before we knew that our embassy would be safe, before we had our Afghan interpreters and other friends out of Afghanistan, to allow it to fall like this without any sort of plan or recourse, it is shameful."

"Again, it is all on President Biden"

Ernst said the potential return of Taliban control over Afghanistan could make it possible for Islamic extremist groups to again have a safe haven to "reconstitute" themselves. Afghanistan was a hotbed for terrorists before President Bush sent troops there following the 9/11 attacks.

Al Qaeda, the group behind the 9/11 attacks, has seen their numbers dwindle in the 20 years since to approximately 200, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

"This did not have to happen," Ernst warned. She added the return of the Taliban brings new risks, especially to the women in the country who were enjoying fledgling freedom under the democratically-elected governments over the past decade.

Biden had been warned by other Republicans he would risk a "Saigon moment" – in reference to how the Vietnam War ended – if he went ahead with a swift withdrawal from Afghanistan.

House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers of Alabama and Committee member Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin both made the reference in recent weeks, with Rogers saying in a statement this week that he pressed the White House for a plan to "avoid the very situation that is now happening in Afghanistan."

"Now, American lives are at risk because President Biden still doesn’t have a plan," Rogers said. Gallagher remarked in June that "chaos on the ground" is possible.

"This may be the ‘Saigon moment’ where you’ve got the helicopter leaving and that’s what everybody associates with his policy," he said at the time.

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These stories of survival and resiliency will appear in an hour-long special presented by the American Veterans Center and Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham and his wife know about loss — and the high cost of war.

He and his wife Carolyn lost not one, but two sons a year apart while Gen. Graham was serving as a top commander in the U.S. Army. Their family's story was told in "The Invisible Front: Loss and Love in the Era of Endless War."

"The Army told Jeffrey he didn't have to go because of the tragedy with experience with our son Kevin. And Jeff looked me in the eye and said, ‘Dad, I have to go,’" Gen. Graham, who spent 35 years in the Army said. He understood his son's wishes.

"Eight months later," Graham said, "Jeff was killed by an IED while he was on foot patrol outside of Fallujah in Iraq."

Their son Kevin was an ROTC Army cadet studying to be an Army doctor when depression led him to take his life. He stopped taking his medication because of the stigma associated with mental health issues and died by suicide. His brother Jeffrey was en route to Fort Riley in Kansas to join the 1st Infantry Division to deploy to Iraq.

"So our sons died fighting different battles. Kevin died fighting the battle of the mind and Jeffrey died fighting an enemy in a faraway land," Graham said.

"Our sons died fighting different battles. Kevin died fighting the battle of the mind and Jeffrey died fighting an enemy in a faraway land."

— Army Maj. Gen. Mark Graham

To cope with the loss, Graham started a national call center at Rutgers University called Vets4Warriors, which allows service members to speak to a Veteran within 30 seconds. He says he has seen an uptick in calls since the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Department of Veterans Affairs saw 30% more calls to its suicide hotline (1-800-273-8255 press 1) from Aug. 15–31 as the U.S. military ended a 20-year presence in the Asian nation.

"We did see. We absolutely did," Graham told a live audience of military cadets at the U.S. Navy Memorial during the taping of "The Wounded Warrior Experience."

"Loneliness is one of the top reasons we get calls, and we've always gotten calls. And the loneliness has just grown and grown, exacerbated through the pandemic. And then when the Afghanistan withdrawal hit, it really impacted because they weren't near each other."

"Loneliness is one of the top reasons we get calls, and we've always gotten calls. And the loneliness has just grown and grown, exacerbated through the pandemic."

— Army Maj. Gen. Mark Graham

Allen Levi Simmons served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"So there was a gun in my hand, pillows on my bed, Bible on my nightstand. Paranoia tip toeing through the hallway of my home," Simmons said. "I had the gun in my mouth, finger on the trigger. I had the pills on my bed, and I was tired of feeling like somebody was trying to kill me."

Simmons was with an explosive ordnance disposal company in Marjah, Afghanistan, when he was blown up, hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

"My ears were ringing like a smoke detector," Simmons said. "And little did I know that the rest of my life was going to be changed."

He suffers from PTSD after his traumatic brain injury, but finally asked for help. Writing poetry saved him.

"I had thoughts scrambling in my head. I had panic attacks. I wanted to blow a hole through my head. So that's part of my poem because I practice therapy through poetry, and that's how I got through my post-traumatic stress."

Last year he received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and has his own podcast. His book is called "Can I Speak?"

Simmons described the anguish he felt watching the Afghan war end.

"That withdrawal sucked," Simmons told the audience arranged by the American Veterans Center. "It was like a lot of lives, a lot of blood, a lot of fathers and mothers have passed away. And what do we have to show for it?"

"That withdrawal sucked. It was like, a lot of lives, a lot of blood, a lot of fathers and mothers have passed away. And what do we have to show for it?"

— Allen Levi Simmons, former U.S. Marine

It took 10 years for Will Weatherford, a member of West Virginia’s Army National Guard, to ask for help.

"I battled post-traumatic stress," he said. "But I had trouble admitting that to myself."

He was on the verge of a divorce from his wife, until he got help from the Coalition to Support America’s Heroes.

"I thought that when he came back that everything would be normal again. Things would be like they were, but they weren't," his wife Megan McDonough recalled. "I was determined to find some resources and not just give up. It's not just the Veterans suffering a lot of times. There is a great impact to families and to marriages."

He and his wife Megan currently live on a small working farm in rural West Virginia, where they raise a menagerie of animals, such as alpacas and goats.

The Veterans Crisis Line is available for free, confidential support 24/7 by calling 1-800-273-8255 and pressing 1 or texting 838-255.

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The Pentagon has identified the U.S. Army Green Beret who was killed in a gun battle outside the Afghan capital Monday in Wardack Province, a known Taliban hotbed.

Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Griffin from Greenbrier, Tennessee, a Special Forces soldier, was 41 and making his fourth combat deployment, three to Afghanistan since 2009, according to Lt. Col. Loren Bymer, U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman.

"The loss of Sgt. 1st Class Griffin is felt across the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) Family and the entire Special Forces community," said his commander, Col. Owen G. Ray, in a statement. "He was a warrior - an accomplished, respected and loved Special Forces Soldier that will never be forgotten. We ask that you keep his Family and teammates in your thoughts and prayers."

Griffin first deployed to war with the 82nd Airborne to Iraq in 2006 before joining Special Forces in 2014. He was born in Cristobal, Panama on December 7, 1978.

Sgt. 1st Class Griffin was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart.

Griffin is the 17th American killed this year in combat in Afghanistan. It’s the highest total in the past five years. At the height of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, nearly 500 U.S. troops were killed with over 100,000 deployed there.

Today, there are roughly 14,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, President Trump announced he had canceled secret peace talks with top Afghan and Taliban officials at Camp David.

Since then, the Taliban have continued their onslaught against Afghan security forces with thousands of innocent civilians caught in the cross-fire.

Earlier Tuesday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a pair of suicide attacks killing at least 48 and wounding dozens of others, including women and children.

A suicide bomber targeted a campaign rally for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and arrived on an explosives-laden motorcycle, according to reports.

Hours later, another suicide attack rocked Kabul, killing dozens more outside an Afghan army base in the capital, not far from the U.S. Embassy.

It was the deadliest day in Afghanistan since President Trump abruptly ended the U.S.-led peace talks with the Taliban earlier this month.

Speaking at the Pentagon on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Trump said: “We have hit our enemy harder than they've ever been hit before and that will continue.”

The number of U.S. bombs and other munitions dropped on the Taliban and an ISIS-affiliate in Afghanistan increased 28% in August compared to the previous month, according to the U.S. Air Force.

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OPINION – While some of you may have recently heard of ‘Flanders Fields’ thanks to their amazing efforts helping rescue Americans and Afghans abandoned by our government (along with other groups such as PLAN B- The ARC) – you may not know that their primary mission is to help our Veterans fight drug addiction often brought on by the stresses of war.

After a year of record-breaking Veteran drug overdose deaths, the largest seizure of fentanyl in U.S history, the botched Afghanistan retreat, and an unprecedented rise in Veteran crisis center calls, the need to help Veterans fight addiction has never been greater.

It’s no secret that Veterans are disproportionately affected by alcoholism and addiction, but few understand that the well-publicized #22aDay (the average number of Veterans lost to suicide each day in America) does not include intentional overdoses or addiction related deaths.

The harsh reality is that any Veteran who has ever been prescribed opiates, and any Veteran who has struggled with addiction, will rarely choose any other means of ending their own life. Using a bottle (of alcohol or pills) is no different than pulling the trigger with a firearm.

And the truth is that the ACTUAL number of Veteran suicides per day could be DOUBLE what we’re hearing.

Numerous factors conspire to create dramatically under reported numbers: lack of identifying victims as Veterans, and not ordering toxicology reports in death investigations, are just two.

When people, including Veterans, fall into a life of addiction, they generally become ‘dregs of society,’ stripping them of any status or recognition they once held, this includes being proud American Veterans.

Flanders Fields has been a valued partner of American Defense News in highlighting the issue of Veteran suicides and removing the stigma surrounding Veteran addiction, which is the leading cause of both Veteran homelessness and suicide.

Over 70% of both cases involve substance abuse of some kind.

America must do a better job of making it ‘OK’ for Veterans to reach out for help and recognizing that many of our service members have to fight their own ‘war after the war.’

Today, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, is Giving Tuesday. Every year, on this day people take the time to kick off the Christmas and holiday season by giving back to their community — whether it is by donating money to a charitable cause or volunteering.

And I can’t think of a better cause than this.

Use today (and the rest of this year) to spread the word about organizations such as Flanders Fields who are fighting the good fight to end Veteran addiction. And please make a donation, you will be glad you did.

Flanders Fields is a non-profit 501 (c) 3 charity organization.

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The speed of the Taliban’s advance across Afghanistan in the past few weeks left US Veterans who served in America’s longest war “stunned and dismayed.”

“This one will hurt for a long time, man,” Sean Gustafson, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who deployed to the city of Herat in western Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007, told Stars and Stripes.

Herat, where Gustafson and other troops built schools, fell to the insurgents on Thursday. In just weeks, the Taliban has swept across the country as the US started moving its troops out after 20 years, leaving the Vets watching in shock.

Some told the military newspaper that the final days of the US presence should have been handled better.

“A complete pullout is not only unnecessary, it is sabotage,” said Army Staff Sgt. Seamus Fennessy, who fought in Ghazni province in 2010.

The withdrawal, he said, was “a betrayal of American and international forces who have expended so much in life and limb to prevent the resurgence of the Taliban,” adding that some troops should have stayed in the country.

Other Vets were deluged with messages from people they knew in Afghanistan seeking help getting visas to escape.

“Maybe we stayed longer than we should have, but the manner in which we pulled out, it’s just unfortunate, and my heart breaks,” said Christy Barry, who deployed to Afghanistan multiple times as both an Air Force officer and a civilian adviser.

“You pour your heart into it, and at the time, it feels like you’re doing something great and you’re making a difference,” she said. “And looking back on it now, I still feel that way, but it’s with a sadness.”

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Lucca, the German Shephard, is gone but not forgotten.

A war dog named Lucca, who served in more than 400 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been given a full military burial in Michigan over the weekend.

Her longtime handler, retired Marine Master Sergeant Chris Willingham, carried the dog's ashes behind the canine honor guard during the ceremony for the 14-year-old German Shepherd.

“Lucca saved my life on multiple occasions,” Sgnt. Willingham told Inside Edition.

In 2016, Lucca was awarded the Dickin Medal, which is the highest honor a military service animal can get. Lucca was the first working dog in the military to receive it.

On her last patrol in Afghanistan, an explosive device went off and Lucca's left leg had to be amputated. She was then sent to rehabilitation.

“She came running up to me and jumped on me and started licking my face and that's when you know you're in Lucca's good graces,” Willingham recalled of their reunion after the rehabilitation.

Old age finally took Lucca, and while her heroic life came to an end, she was celebrated at the Michigan War Dog Memorial, where hundreds of Americans came to pay their respects and fellow dogs of war walked in formation to honor their comrade.

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