A Veteran’s Damning Letter To Inept Representatives • The Havok Journal

With recent events in Afghanistan and the abhorrent way that it has been handled, many of our readers have asked, “how can I help?” The best way you can help right now is to make your voice heard by your political representatives.

You have our complete permission to copy/paste and personalize this letter as your own to your representative.

Dear sir/ma’am,

I think it goes without saying that we are all extremely worried about the current situation in Afghanistan. In this day and age, it’s extremely tempting to turn every issue into a political one, and the American withdrawal and response to the Taliban’s takeover of the country have already caused battle lines to form. 

I myself find it extremely difficult to leave my personal feelings on the matter out of this letter. But, there’s a time and a place, and this is neither. For now, there is but one simple, overriding truth: we need your help. Afghanistan needs your help. 

As we speak, as many as fifteen thousand American citizens are trapped in areas occupied by the Taliban. Countless thousands more of our friends and allies, men and women who served side by side with American forces, at no small personal risk to themselves, are trapped. The Taliban have started going door to door searching for them, and the videos of their executions have already started making their way online. 

This is unacceptable. 

I don’t give a damn about the politics of the situation. Red versus blue, right versus left, it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. American citizens, and proven friends of America, are at very real risk of being dragged into the street and brutally executed at the hands of a regime who has, time and time again, proven their blatant disregard for human life. 

We cannot let this stand. America cannot let this stand. 

I served my nation honorably in the longest period of war we’ve ever seen. It was drilled into my head, time and time again, that we never leave a man behind. Ever. No matter the circumstances, no matter what stands in our way, we bring our people home. Dead or alive, intact or in pieces, it doesn’t matter. If all that’s left has to be scraped into a body bag with a shovel, we get our shovel and start scraping. We do not leave anyone behind, ever. 

The very idea that American citizens might be left at the mercy of ruthless zealots is unconscionable. It’s anathema to everything we stand for, to the very idea of American honor. So too is the idea that we’re simply abandoning our friends. We made that mistake once in Syria, and by my God and all that I hold holy, I swore that I would never sit by idly and let it happen again. 

That’s why I’m writing to you today. I hold no personal power. My voice holds no special sway over the leaders of our nation. But yours does. 

We need you. The Americans trapped in Afghanistan need you. Our friends and allies who have shared bread and hardship need you. The countless American veterans who served in Afghanistan, who sacrificed their mental and physical health, who shortened their lives breathing in toxic air, who watched their friends bleed and die, need you. 

We need you to be heard where we cannot. We need you to make a stand in the halls of power. I don’t care who you have to call, what deals you have to make. I don’t care if you have to sell your soul to the Devil himself. It’s no more a sacrifice than you’ve asked of us these last two decades. 

You owe it to each and every veteran of the last twenty years of war, to each and every American abandoned to the tender mercies of the Taliban, and to each and every Afghani who hoped for a brighter future and fought to make it happen. 

A tragedy of unprecedented proportions is waiting just over the horizon, but it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Fix this. Fix this, or be condemned as a coward and a traitor to the very concept of the America we fought for all these years. The choice is yours. I pray you choose wisely.