After reading Nick Arama’s wonderful piece regarding the State Department’s after-action review of t
redstate.com By Matt Dempsey
After reading Nick Arama’s wonderful piece regarding the State Department’s after-action review of the Afghanistan withdrawal, I was motivated to give you my personal assessment of the pullout from a combat veteran’s perspective and maybe offer some insight that the American people need to see, but rarely get the opportunity to for various reasons. And thanks to the RedState Team, I am being afforded the opportunity to do just that.
When I was in boot camp at MCRD (Marine Corps Recruit Depot) San Diego in October 2000, our Drill Instructors told us about the bombing of the USS Cole, while in port in Yemen. They told us that we better get ready to go to war because that’s what they were all anticipating. Little did we know that war was indeed coming, just not yet. I hit the Fleet in January 2001 and went about my service like everyone else, shut up and train.
Most of us can remember the dark day of September 11th, 2001, and seeing the carnage and destruction left over from the worst terrorist attacks on American soil in our history. I still remember how I found out. One of our platoon squad leaders ran around the corner of the 3rd deck (that’s the floor for all the civilians) of our barracks and he was yelling, “A f*****g plane just hit the Trade Center!” My roommate had the TV on and he switched it to the news and we both saw the second plane (United Flight 175) go into the South Tower. My entire platoon was watching when President George W. Bush in New York said that he “could hear you, the world can hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” Then on October 7th, 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom officially started and we saw just a few months later in March, the complete defeat of the Taliban.
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