Sunday, August 15th, 2021

Dear fellow Operation Enduring Freedom veteran,

This letter is a “buddy check,” as we call it – the act of reaching out to make sure someone else’s head is still above water. I have turned off the news and hope you have, too. We do not need to see more photos of places we walked, or of our equipment being taken over by terrorists, or of desperate people falling to their deaths as they attempt to hold onto the outside of departing freedom flights. We know what Afghanistan looks like, what it smells like. We were there.

As I watch Afghan towns and provinces tumble to the Taliban like so many dominoes, I vacillate between anger and depression. I feel hopeless. I am resentful that of the thousands of images I keep in my mind, our presence there is now forever symbolized by another Chinook evacuating an embassy. I am in despair over a war that has marked my entire adult life (I received my offer of appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy on September 11th, 2001) ending with ghost faces, names, and places rolling through our collective mind. While we achieved our stated objective of denying a terrorist safe haven, preventing another 9/11 every single day for 20 years, the general public does not understand the importance of that objective, or in any way see victory. I feel isolated from everyone who did not serve in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) or a war like ours.

In short, I grieve. We grieve together.

The chaos in which OEF is ending constitutes to many of us a violation of what we believe to be moral obligations. We feel obligation to uphold ideals of freedom and victory, to defend what is right and just. We feel obligation to our brothers and sisters in arms, especially those lost or injured. We feel obligation to our families, left alone so we could go overseas. Most of us report feeling obligation to protect the innocent; not to the extent that we remain in a state of foreign conflict indefinitely, but sufficient to orchestrate our departure from the battlefield in such a way, and on such a timeline, that honors the realities of the situation on the ground and does its best to protect those not a part of atrocities. In a “low-intensity conflict,” as scholars call our 20 years in Afghanistan, troops became more significantly enmeshed with locals than do fighters in more compressed wars. As a result, we all have memories of innocents, usually women and children. They are being slaughtered now, and we know it, and it hurts.

People removed from the war tend to get caught up in political conversations about whether we should have been there in the first place, but once there, none of that matters. This is our war, now, and the outcome is personal. I have spoken with more than a few OEF veterans this week who say in no uncertain terms that they hold the present slaughter of Afghan nationals by the Taliban to be our fault for a seemingly unplanned withdrawal; they use words like “disgrace” to describe the blood they see on our hands. Foreign area officers and linguists who spent years becoming equipped to work in Afghan culture use terms like “absolute guilt” as they offer apologies to the Afghan people on social media. Personal texts are peppered with shared pictures of children we once knew and pictures of us with our interpreters, with comments asking if we think they are still alive. Some of us are hearing directly from our Aghan counterparts; their fear for themselves and their families is thick and comes to rest directly on our hearts.[1]

So, what can we do?

“You have to focus on the cross,” my father told me this morning over breakfast. He has fought in many places, all over the world.

“I know,” I replied. “But it doesn’t help with the sadness or the anger.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he answered. “But focusing on the cross keeps your head above water. Remember how your grandfather fought, first World War II, then Korea, then Vietnam? I’ll never forget 1975. The day the U.S. left Saigon was a bad day. I saw in him every emotion you describe, and the faces of the dead in his eyes. Keep your eyes on the cross, even if that’s the only part of you above water.”

The thing about my father’s advice, frustratingly simple though it may seem at first receipt, is that it is true. From our current position treading water in vast pools of mental, emotional, and spiritual pain, if we look at the cross, we see a man. That man has been tortured, abused, literally crucified. That man, from his own point of view, has been forsaken, and his last human words on this earth are to ask why.

Why would an all-knowing God allow for such pain to be inflicted upon his only begotten Son? Perhaps, perhaps for such a time as this. Perhaps so we know we are not alone. Perhaps so we can walk behind one who knows our sorrows, who will carry them for us. One who, under the weight of pain greater than we can imagine or could bear, rose again. One who felt alone.

Here is the truth, stripped of all pretense, from one veteran to another – the sight and knowledge of Jesus Christ, who felt forsaken, is cause for hope. The might and glory of our Lord is such that he knew we would at times feel abandoned by him, and his son took on the weight of even that pain. You may feel lost now. You may doubt. You may want to scream at God. So, scream. Sob. Curse. Beg. He’s heard it before. Bring all to the feet of him who felt forsaken, as we do now.

Keep your eyes on the cross. Christ’s story does not end there, and neither does ours.

With prayers for Afghanistan, the Afghan people, our allies, our families, and ourselves,

Jan

P.S.  Don’t know what to do? Hydrate. Circle the wagons, watch each other, watch yourselves. Pick up the phone when a brother or sister calls, answer the texts, hit the gym, sleep the best you can, read great books, eat fresh food.

Onward. For the next mission - Joshua 24:15.

[1] I believe that what we are experiencing now, standing together as veterans in common experience of Afghanistan one last time, is a group occurrence of moral injury. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) defines moral injury this way: “In traumatic or unusually stressful circumstances, people may perpetrate, fail to prevent, or witness events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations… Moral injury is the distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes spiritual aftermath of exposure to such events.”  "Guilt" and "shame" are key words in nearly any working definition of moral injury. Moral injury is something apart from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and must include consideration of the spiritual and the ethical to heal. More to come on this topic in another article.

Jan Shultis is a Naval Academy graduate, author of two books, and Associate Editor at moralapologetics.com who plans to pursue her DMin at Houston Baptist University. After 14 years in uniform serving around the U.S. and in Afghanistan, she founded a faith-based non-profit focused on veterans, law enforcement, first responders, and families that supports warriors in need throughout Texas, with a special focus on ministry in local courts and jails. Jan brings to the Moral Apologetics team additional professional experience in biotechnology, public relations, and ethics curriculum development. Jan shares that she is extremely excited to spearhead the Center’s innovative exploration of the organic connections between moral apologetics and moral injury, including but not limited to military veterans. She is local to Houston and looks forward to contributing to the Center’s robust on-campus presence at HBU