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Let's start at the beginning.

How... how did this all come about?

I mean, one minute

you're at Tim Kennedy's

house working on his book,

and the next minute

you've been in the Middle East

in Afghanistan for the past seven,

eight days.

Yeah,

I can definitely say

that I never expected

to be on a mission like this.

You know, the...

the Taliban

just blasted through Afghanistan so fast

that it put

both our troops

and our allies

in a really precarious position.

Is the Department of Defense surprised

at how quickly

it seems that the Afghan National Army

has collapsed under Taliban pressure?

Is... is the military

or the Pentagon or the administration

everyone surprised

by how fast the Taliban

has been able

to move through parts of the country,

taking these major cities

like Kandahar, Herat? Lashkar Gah

looks like it's fallen.

Can you...

offer any guarantee

to the Americans and Afghan allies

that if they remain there past

the end of the month, U.S.

troops will help them evacuate

past the end of the month?

Our focus right

now is on doing the work at hand.

On July the fifth,

in the middle of the night,

the Americans left Bagram for good

without telling the base's Afghan commander.

This map shows Taliban controlled

areas in red,

contested territory in yellow,

and regions under government control

in blue.

The embattled government controls

only the capital, Kabul,

and the areas marked in blue.

I cannot believe the world

abandoned Afghanistan.

Our friends are going to get killed.

They're going to kill us.

Our women are not going

to have any more rights.

It was so frightening for me

when I heard their stories like girls

weren't allowed to go to school.

Boys were needed to obey

what Taliban told them.

Like,

it was so horrible for me

that when I heard the girls

need to marry at a very young age

to a man that they don't want to.

And that was just devastating.

And then watching, just being like

everyone in America glued to the news,

watching the Taliban march

across a country that had held U.S.

troops for 20 years,

many of whom took their,

you know, had their last moments on earth

occur there or left pieces of themselves

there, literally and otherwise.

And it was just devastating.

Helping liberate

those people and...

And send little girls to school

and all these things we did.

And it came at a cost.

And we... we lost so many American lives.

I buried 15 friends

personally that served in Afghanistan.

So it was always personal to me.

To the community of people

who either had lost

a loved one in Afghanistan

or whose lives had been forever

impacted by Afghanistan,

we had to do something to try to,

not only make them whole, but

make it all count.

Having uncles that were in Vietnam,

both of them were texting me

while Afghanistan was falling and

painfully pointing out the similarities

between the two.

It didn't look like

the government

was going to be able to react fast enough

to get people out.

Our good friend

Chad Robichaux had been trying

to get his interpreter out.

He had done ten deployments

with this interpreter named Aziz.

You're forward deployed

and it's kind of

just you and an interpreter sometimes.

And Aziz was his interpreter.

He quickly became my teammate

and then my sole teammate.

He and I worked together

on hundreds of combat missions.

I knew that if I

didn't personally intervene,

Aziz would die.

He was individually already identified.

He was on the run.

His days were numbered

and he was going to die.

These people are being slaughtered.

We made a promise to them.

They're being slaughtered.

They're being hunted for the crime of fighting alongside

our own military.

For six years

I had been fighting to get this guy the visa

he deserved. A SIV, special immigrant visa.

And that process is only supposed

to take nine months.

To not be able to get him here in six years.

And a nine month process

was really disturbing to me.

And he was getting desperate

because it didn't look like

the government had... had a plan in place

that was going to get him out in time.

So he was

he was planning a trip of just four

or five guys

just to get Aziz out

and started making connections.

For me, it was a choice of

do I do

nothing or do I

save my friend's life who saved mine?

I knew I needed

not only help, but the right help.

People that had the experience,

but also people I trusted.

Chad and I connected.

We had worked together

over the last several years

and I just said, you know, how can I help?

While I was talking to Chad,

Nick,

who is here writing Scars

and Stripes with me,

is talking to Sarah Verardo,

both asking us the same question of,

Can you go?

But more importantly,

giving us and providing us the answer with

this is what we're doing.

They were

figuring out a way to land some planes

into Kabul.

Initially, it was a very clear mission,

which was to go

rescue Aziz.

As we were putting that plan together

we kind of pause for a second and said,

Hey this great, we're going to go help Aziz,

but I'm talking to this orphanage over here.

That's 3500 orphans that need help, too.

Why don't we help them?

And I think there was another pause

and we said, man,

we really have the right group of people here.

We have the skills.

We have the ability to do this.

The passion's there.

Let's not just help this limited group.

Let's help as many people as we can.

Interpreters and their families,

women and children that would be vulnerable.

Christians that would be persecuted

for their faith,

these different vulnerable groups.

Let's help as many people as we can.

And so I started

just putting together

different lists and trying to help.

We knew it would be a difficult situation,

but we thought that we had,

you know, a couple of weeks

to make real substantial change.

And as these requests started to build

and we started vetting

these requests, resources

also started to be organized.

And so Tim and I

just looked at each other and said, okay.

Then we're getting on a plane.

24 hours later, tickets are booked.

We're boarding a flight to the Middle East.

100.

70.

60, 50, 40.

We get through all COVID screening

and we arrive at the UAE

military's headquarters for their officers,

like their officer academy.

We just jumped right into the rotation.

There was no time for like,

oh, we're going to sleep.

We're going to...

you know... we're going to figure things out.

We're still in a whirl

trying to figure out what everything is,

where everything is.

Sean Lee, who works for Sarah Verardo,

he had already arrived in UAE

and they had set up a forward TOC.

UAE is our Lily Pad launch base and our forward

Tactical Operations Command Center.

Nick and I were basically running

the evacuation

of 2500 people

from two cell phones and a laptop.

So we just kept working

and working and working.

A number of people

in Congress, in the Senate,

in the State Department, D.O.D.,

were happy to have us.

People wanted to help.

And so it was just connecting

people who wanted to help

that would be effective at helping.

Back home in the States,

Sarah Verardo set up

operation center in Washington, D.C.

to process people that needed help, help

vet people, work

directly with the Joint Chiefs

to make sure that we're vetting our groups.

Senator Tillis, his team,

I mean,

it was really whatever we needed, they were

they were doing

they were legitimizing our efforts.

DOD was legitimizing our efforts.

We saw so many great people

drop their lives and do whatever was needed.

One of our team members

had a personal relationship with the

royal family in United Arab Emirates.

We thought,

hey, let's ask them

if they want to participate

in this and help. So we asked for support.

I got several Congress members on a call.

We basically proposed to the UAE

what we're going to do.

And they had faith in us.

They believed that we could do it.

I knew I would be more of an asset

working with whoever's on the ground.

Nick and Tim are in Abu Dhabi and are like,

Can we do a kind of a quick call?

And so I'm thinking, okay,

we're going to get on the phone

and they're going to talk about

getting on a plane

landing and loading people and going back.

And they were like, Yeah,

we're going to do a little bit

more than that.

Leaving the officer's club, it is Joe

who was the

the originating contact for the UAE.

He throws myself and Nick in a truck.

We grab our bags,

check my body armor,

change my batteries in my night vision,

change the batteries in

my thermal imager,

did a couple of tests in a new country

with a new country code

with my SAT radio and my satcom.

Then we drove to the military airstrip.

And shortly thereafter

we were on a flight from Abu Dhabi to Kabul.

And Nick and I boarded a 737, a very weird,

eerie feeling of getting on a 737

with no one on it

besides the crew,

which are all people from Afghanistan.

And the pilots were three pilots

from Afghanistan.

They asked us

if we could get their families out,

and we promised that we would try

and we meant it.

You know,

we got everybody's information

and built

a manifest and tried to get locations

and all that.

And we...

went wheels up around sunrise to fly

into Afghanistan.

Everything you've ever known about

an airfield is wrong here.

I've never seen an airstrip as wild as...

People are everywhere.

There's no tower.

It's like one guy on a radio

running the airstrip. Just nuts.

I mean, it is a mess.

Plane lands.

Taxi stops in front of Ramp nine.

Honestly, I was thinking

how impressive

everybody was,

how hard everybody was working,

and then how bad it was on the ground.

Like, the media is not doing it justice.

I mean, the humanity of it.

Like, you know, kids are sleeping on the ground.

There's... there's, you know, literally

piss and shit everywhere.

There's very little food.

There's

just mounds of plastic bottles.

Nick hops in a side by side with Seaspray

to start going

and helping

these people load onto this aircraft

and start documenting

what is happening on the ground.

And I'm off to go do work.

You know, I open the door to this up

armored Land Cruiser.

The four guys that end up being

there are Seaspray, Dave,

Sean G, and myself.

So our team was comprised of

some of the best

in the business

in terms of special operations

and extraction professionals.

I flew over to Abu Dhabi.

I speak French, Russian, Arabic.

I'm a former Special Forces guy

and I'm a former Army

strategist and planner.

So I thought I'd be in Abu Dhabi

in an operation center helping out to plan.

So I found myself on the runway with

Sean and Seaspray for a couple of days,

and then we had Tim Kennedy roll in.

Sean G's first question is,

"What do you need?"

I need a gun,

I need some local comms,

and I need to know what we're doing.

Sean G and Seaspray

who are already on the evac team

and man, immediately

I think Tim was on the ground

and walking and getting briefed

and walking out of the wire.

The military was not allowed to

go outside the wire, period.

That was the rules of engagement.

They were not allowed

to go outside of the wire.

The way the White House set this up,

they took the NEO operation,

the noncombatant evacuation

operation away

from the Department of Defense

and gave it to the State Department,

which is not the way

things are supposed to be done.

And so when that happened,

the State Department

treated the NEO operation in the airport

like an embassy.

So now the US military can only support

what's inside.

They can't go outside

and help people. Americans.

Something can happen right in front of them.

They can't go outside and help.

They can't go outside and get interpreters.

They have to control that airport.

The way that you wage war.

You have kind of four different elements

you have diplomatic, information,

military, and economic.

On the ground in Afghanistan,

all of those are currently being controlled

by the Taliban.

The Taliban now control the airport.

You'll hear people say that the U.S. military did.

Anybody who knows

military strategy knows that

whoever controls the outside

perimeter, controls that ground space.

So anybody inside of that perimeter

was there

only because the Taliban

allowed them to be there.

Who's coming on to bases?

How the military is going to be screening?

Who's coming on? Who's taking passports?

Like, that's happening by the Taliban.

A lot of people were murdered

right outside of the wire by the Taliban

to show that they could do it.

Soldiers used to shoot... shoot with their guns

to avoid the crowd. But in between,

I saw people dying over there.

They got hit by the bullets.

I saw them dying there.

The ground was full of blood.

I saw children crying over their mothers.

Worried that the time

to take care of their kids,

their small babies.

I saw some of the babies fell on the ground.

People were running on them.

That was the most horrible part.

Another team had a woman

put on the hood of their car

and as the Taliban looked right at them,

they just executed the woman on the hood

just to try to elicit a response.

Just to be like,

just so we're super clear

about who is in charge here,

I'm going to murder this woman

right in front of you.

And there's nothing

that you can do about it.

This is the Taliban I know.

And this is the Taliban

that is outside the gates of HKIA.

It was probably one

of the more traumatic things

I've been through.

I've been in

six or so conflicts, in two wars.

I have two combat infantry badges.

I've seen a lot of stuff.

Refugees are innocent civilians.

So when something happens to them

intentionally,

you know, yes,

you have collateral damage in a war,

but something happens to them intentionally.

It really hits home hard.

It's impossible to explain the

the level of desperation that people felt.

I mean if you just think about the first couple of days

when people were trying

to hang on to the bottom of C-17s.

That's desperation

that Americans... like Americans

don't understand that level of desperation.

I don't... I don't understand.

Yeah, I think...

I don't think the news captured it.

And I don't think people

could really comprehend

the environment of HKIA.

So many guys that I know

that have tremendous amount

of experience in combat

and special operations

and seeing horrific things,

all describe it as one of the most chaotic

and horrific things they have ever seen.

I've never seen desperation

like what I saw

in Kabul, what I saw in HKIA.

You know, the Afghans knew

that we would take children.

So if it was an infant,

we would take the infant.

Not that the troops were trying to.

But if somebody, like,

climbed up the wall and handed,

you know, a Marine or one of the 82nd

Airborne guys, an infant, they were taken.

Well...

people got desperate

and...

so that you understand

it's like people were crowd surfing babies.

They were passing babies

so that the babies would get up front

so that they could then, you know,

hand them to troops.

And this was their best hope

that that child might live,

that their best hope was

that they could beach ball

a child forward into the crowd

and that some soldier

or Airman or Marine

on top of this wall

could reach down, pull this child up,

and this child would have a better chance

at life than staying in Afghanistan.

These troops down on that wall,

just having people beg all day, all night,

please get them out.

And... and,

you know,

if they don't get in,

they're probably going to die.

And then some people,

you know, I don't...

I don't know what level of desperation

you need to be at to do this.

But there were people that threw the babies

over the wall

when Americans didn't take them.

This is like a frail, small Afghan woman

taking her infant child

and throwing this child as hard

and as high as she could

in the hopes

that somebody might catch this baby.

Not realizing that on the other side of

the wall was concertina.

So like there were

some babies that,

you know, that bled out

on the concertina wire.

Um...

And that's...

That's...

That's the desperation that you...

that you can't...

you can't put that on TV.

You know, you don't...

you don't see that anywhere.

And as I'm moving past these gates,

whether it's Black Gate or Abbey Gate or,

you know, the U.N. gate,

those babies are still in the concertina wire

and those women are still stuck out there

screaming. The nightmares and like the...

So everything that was outside of that lane,

you know, like I'm focused on this

with everything

I'm trying to save a woman and her children,

but off to like five feet away from me

is a... is a dead child.

You know, is... is a smoldering, burning body.

And having smelled bodies

my whole entire adult life,

but then seeing it's a small one.

And that's a burning body of a child

that was lit by the Taliban.

There's nothing I could do about...

That's already gone. But I'm still here.

But it was just...

everywhere.

The only way

to effectively evacuate

those who were the most

vulnerable was to go out and get them.

I'll just say special units.

And so our ground team was essentially

one of those special units

that were allowed to go outside the wire.

We were targeting specific individuals

that were passport and SIV holders

that were external to the base

and needed to get on in a safe way.

Couldn't necessarily

go through the Taliban checkpoints

because they had been working

with the United States.

The Taliban knew

which women were educated and could read.

The Taliban knew

who the Christians were like,

"These are all the targets."

And back in the JOC,

you know,

we were communicating with these targets

before we would pass them on to the guys.

And, you know,

we put target packages together

and we'd be talking to them

and sending the information

down to the ground team.

But a lot of these targets would go dark.

Looking at this problem set,

you know, it's really no different

than any other situation,

you know, that involves a mass movement.

It's a logistic challenge,

you know,

but it's based on the same framework

of any NEO.

So we go out to do a

recon of a potential evacuation site.

As we approach the first spot,

I see some Taliban overwatch positions

on top of a few two, three story buildings,

and those observation

positions can clearly see

pretty much everything in that area.

We start exploring a couple

more evacuation spots.

I clamber up to this gate and

I realize really

quickly that there's just one single bolt

on the inside of this gate,

keeping this gate

closed from the outside of the Taliban

and access to this big empty parking lot.

That just has a bunch of these buses

lined up.

And the buses were perfect

because it provides cover.

And then immediately adjacent to that

were these

retention, I don't know

if they're oil or water tanks,

maybe a kilometer of them,

and then moved into this urban, albeit

very poor

suburb, and that seemed mostly vacant.

This was a not observed portion of our

perimeter for HKIA.

Nobody would notice

some people moving through there

and there were people

kind of constantly moving through there.

So it looked awesome.

They were just

pulling targets through the wire

all night, nonstop,

and they were coming back in the wire

around the time the sun came up.

Before leaving UAE,

we kind of set up

the five W's for initial linkup.

What proves to be

the most difficult thing in

the evacuation is linkup.

So we start building

these packages of people

with information to validate who they were,

and that would build manifest.

And those manifest would get...

Will get sent to the Joint Chiefs

to get approved.

There were some lists

that were DOD approved,

but not DOS approved.

There were some lists

that were DOS approved,

but not DOD approved.

There were some lists

that were Pentagon approved.

DOD, Pentagon, DOS

approved, but not Taliban approved.

So night looks like this:

sun goes down.

I pre-position at a linkup location

where I say, at the corner

of this outside of this gate at this time,

you're going to do a far recognition.

And then once they get close

they have to do the near security check.

Maybe it's a proword, maybe it's

a secret phrase,

maybe it's a word

that you have to slip into a sentence.

And there were lots of different

far and near recognition

signals that we were using

and we were changing them every few hours.

Once we had that near recognition signal,

then I need to confirm that

the documents that you digitally sent to us

were the documents

that you physically have in hand.

Basically the places

where nobody would actually want to go,

that's how they were bringing people in.

And they had...

They had four different good rat lines

into the complex.

Even preplanned routes, as I'm like looking at a map,

and I'm having to go from point A to point B,

I might set up one, two, three, four, five

different routes to get there.

Well, my life and the life of these people that we're trying

to get out is on the line...

And... um...

Figuring out multiple ways to get right back

onto HKIA proves... um... to be pretty important.

They were crawling through sewage,

ditches, gross... you know, literally through crap

under... under concertina and barbed wire.

Digging holes.

Sneaking past Taliban checkpoints

and then sneaking onto the airbase

and then through the airstrip to our hangar

to be manifested for the next flight out.

Let's say each of those takes

45 minutes to 90 minutes.

Multiply that by the ten,

11 hours of darkness.

That's the night.

We slept maybe an hour a day

and just some moving...

it became a blur.

The second day, we got 800 people out

and then again it became a blur.

My phone would die like three

times in a 24 hour period.

I knew that I lost my voice

probably like around

August 19th, temporarily, just because I had...

I just didn't stop talking.

I didn't stop collecting information.

Sean G is off

talking to thousands of people

on his seven different phones

that he's using.

If you have the ability to help someone,

you help someone.

And like I've always

I've always believed that so strongly.

And so I was willing to use

any ounce of political capital or anything

I had to throw it at this problem

knowing that, like,

maybe this is like my one favor

I'm ever going to ask of this person

in my lifetime.

And now this is what I've been waiting for.

Like this is the time to use it and to do it.

I'm able to make a far recognition,

near recognition.

Their paperwork aligns with the paperwork

that are sent digitally.

They were vetted, it's approved.

I'm able to bring them in

and behind them,

as I'm bringing in these four people,

behind them was another 40 people

that those four people had told

they're going to be able

to get onto the base and maybe get out.

And then I have to look at those

other 40 people and be like,

No, bro, like, I can't do anything with you.

Yeah, we're making differences.

We're picking up pieces of sand

and you pick up enough of them,

you'll eventually have a bucket.

But...

I'm looking at a beach,

you know, and I'm moving a grain of sand

at a time.

We're so focused on what we had to do that

every one of those

pieces of sand was a life.

A life that fought for us, and a life

that deserved

to live and a life that deserved

a better opportunity than

what the Taliban was going to give them.

You know, we're a drop in the bucket.

And every life

that has moved off that beach

and into a bucket is a life that is

that is saved from...

indescribable acts.

Now it's how many people can we get out

in the little bit of time

that we have before, ultimately,

that base crumbles.

Finally, as things were starting to get tight,

New Caption

that a whole lot of government agencies

had their people still out there by name.

We knew we were getting close to the end.

So we... our team

physically bought seven buses.

We had a location for 300 orphans.

We had a location for about 100 Christians.

And then we had

several high value

individuals that were requested

by government entities for us to pick up.

And then we also had the families of

the crews that had been flying the charter airplanes.

We send out buses to multiple places

throughout the city.

The most elite intelligence agencies

in the world

have their people on these buses.

Afghan Special Forces commandos,

interpreters, Christians, orphans.

All of these on these buses.

The guys worked all night

and then filled those buses

with those individuals.

We thought we could

we could just get one big, big lump through.

We had this great little gate

that we had arranged

ahead of time with the Marines.

We have five of them

lined up at this

at this one gate; Black Gate.

I got a SAT call.

Hey, we got

300 orphans, 100 Christians,

the HVT's, and the families of about

half the crew through the gate.

We danced a jig.

Like we were like, you know, fuck yeah.

Like... one of the happiest moments

that we had during the whole event.

Nick and I,

as the call came in

that they were approaching the gate

and that they were getting ready to come in,

were high fiving

and kind of jumping around.

And it's 3:00 in the morning,

there's nobody else around.

And we're doing as much as we can

as fast as we can.

But we can't make mistakes.

You know,

we can't let one person

through that shouldn't have gotten through.

And so we're being thorough.

And we were talking to one of the

government representatives

who is the regional

representative for that agency.

Calls are going up chains of command,

and ultimately

the full bird Colonel

who is in charge of the base arrives on...

on scene at Black Gate.

And he just makes the call,

"Turn everybody around...

put everybody back out...

I don't care who they are."

Tim calls on the SAT phone.

He's like, they're kicking them out.

They're going to kick them all out.

I got a message from Sean Lee

that says a colonel from the 82nd

is seriously about to kick out

300 orphans

and Christians and American citizens.

G... tried to talk sense into them.

Can we at least go through all these people

and make sure we pull out

the American citizens

and the green card holders?

Pump the brakes here.

Let's talk about this. And he's like, "Nope.

It's my decision.

It's a command."

Like, well, I'm not in the military.

I'm not here for the military.

And that's not really a lawful order.

Let's talk about this.

Like, is this an unlawful order

or is he just a terrible human being?

What is happening?

From his perspective, even though Tim wasn't

the team leader,

Tim was the only guy that he knew.

He thought, "This is some fuckin' guy

that's just showing up in Afghanistan

running seven buses in,

you know,

fuck this guy, I want to kick him out."

These were people that fought

and had their relatives die for us.

They lost their limbs for us.

They lost their adult lives and youth and

their innocence for us.

Yes, they're fighting for Afghanistan.

Yes, they're fighting for their people.

But they are fighting with us.

That's who... that's who

we're trying to save here.

From our perspective,

this was possibly the most valuable load

of people we had brought in thus far.

I said, Hey, look, I'm

a West Pointer too.

I've been to your school.

Trust me on this.

We have the manifest for you.

He said, "I don't care where you've been to school".

But the next decision he made

was just unconscionable.

It embarrassed me for the Army.

If I have somebody with a blue passport,

if I have an American

hold up a blue passport,

can that person get on a bus?

If I have somebody hold up

an SIV,

a special immigration visa,

can that person get back on the bus?

If I have a P1, if I have a green card,

I have a spouse of an American citizen...

can these people get back on these buses?

"No, I don't care who they are.

You get back on those buses

and those buses go back into Kabul.

Get them off this base."

Can we just keep the blue passport holders?

Tim yells.

And he says,

"Everybody goes back on these buses

and I want them escorted back off the base."

And the colonel said, kick them out.

Whoever just made the decision

to turn his bus around

essentially just killed...

Just murdered... these people.

And by the way, some of those people

are children

and some of these people were women.

But some of these people are Americans

that we just sent back to the Taliban.

Whoever got killed by the Taliban

because of that decision,

that decision was on him.

And I called Senator Tillis.

Senator Tillis called multiple generals.

Those generals called to the ground.

But by the time

the generals connected

with the colonel to stop it,

he had already kicked the buses off.

And we... we did not see them again.

Every Taliban

around the airport

saw them come through the gate

on a bus with Americans

and now every Taliban member

at the gate was going to see them leave

and go back into Kabul.

And that's heart wrenching.

There's not enough emotional capacity left

in my soul to be able to mourn

four busloads of people that are about to die.

Because the time spent in anguish

and mourning, is time

that could have been spent

trying to save other people.

We continued to do what we had to do

because we knew these

people were counting on us.

We knew that the guys,

our friends

who were at HKIA trying to help

people needed us to do this work.

The Afghans trying to get into HKIA

needed us to do this work.

So we put it behind us and put our noses

the grindstone and continued working.

And we worked for the rest of that day.

The guys,

unwilling to quit,

tripled their efforts and worked

and pulled out hundreds more people that night.

Everything is starting to collapse on HKIA.

People are breaking down,

people are loading up,

they're taking bulldozers

and driving them over night vision.

You see Marines with sledgehammers

going into aircraft

and starting to smash control panels to aircraft.

Like, everything is starting to crumble

and fall back to like this last Alamo.

The only thing staying out is security.

And one of those security checkpoints

is at the Abbey Gate.

And the Abbey Gate

was one of the few places where

if you had all the documentation,

the American government would

vet and proof you there.

And if you were on their list,

you could come through that gate.

There are offshoots,

factions of the Taliban.

Name them whatever you want.

ISIS-K. I don't care what you call them.

It's the Taliban. It's just factions.

They're pragmatically organized.

So the Taliban sent in a suicide bomber

to that gate, an IED, and... um...

blew it up.

The attack took place at Hamid Karzai

International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

As a result of this attack,

13 of our nation's best and brightest,

our heroes

paid the ultimate sacrifice

in an effort to save the lives

of American citizens

and thousands of Afghans

during the Non Combatant Evacuation of HKIA.

There's so much of their life

that is left to be lived.

So many things they haven't experienced.

So many things they don't know.

They haven't been married, they haven't had children.

They haven't traveled the world.

They haven't,

you know, found what they're good at.

They... there's so much they don't know.

And... uh...

you know, and now they're gone.

And they were all kids, 13 kids, you know.

You know, they were out there

helping people, you know, giving people aid,

helping people get through the wire,

trying to do the right thing,

trying to represent, you know, themselves,

the country,

the military in the best way possible, like,

you know, just

absolute heroes.

We knew that we would not be able

to send another flight in

and we wouldn't be able

to get anybody else out.

When the last airplane lifted out of HKIA

at the end of August. That was their hope.

The United States ended its

20 year war in Afghanistan today

with the conclusion

of the largest noncombatant

airlift in American history.

I remember at one point Sean G

was still sending me names

and this was like

right around the time we were learning that

this would not be possible any more.

And he said,

"We have to keep making a list.

And this is going to be a list of the people

that we were forced to leave behind."

And it just felt so haunting to

put their names in these spreadsheets,

knowing that we would have all kept going

as long as we were able.

And the choice was taken away.

And we just thought, we had more time.

We're waiting on the ramp.

The four of us are at the very back

with the air crew.

And as the ramp closes

and the last little bit of light

from Afghanistan finally

closes out,

it's...

It's like this resounding gong of failure.

I'm surrounded by hundreds of people.

We had a...

we had a woman that started fainting.

Is there a doctor here?

14 people stand up.

All of them speak perfect English.

All of them have worked

for the Americans as doctors,

orthodontists, dentists,

and orthopedic surgeons

and open heart surgeons,

like they're on this plane.

That's who's on these planes.

These were amazing,

educated, hard working people

that worked and fought with Americans.

What our government did,

the decisions our government did

cost American lives.

They cost the lives of innocent

Afghan people.

And it made the world

a lot less safe of a place.

I didn't have to go pull a baby

out of the concertina wire.

But I saw it.

You know, I didn't have to go and try to pull

baby up and over the wall. But I saw it.

You know, I didn't...

I didn't have to go pick a baby off

that was floating atop the crowd,

but I saw it. I was too busy.

And... and that hurts, too.

Like, I was too busy, you know?

Like did that life not value

more than this life,

especially with this life.

This mission got failed

or this mission got botched

or the Taliban interdicted

this group that's trying to link up with

and I never was able to make a link up

and I just lost 90 minutes of time

and had to flex off to another operation.

When I finally get there,

I link up and it's the wrong person,

or they brought too many people

and I have to tell those people

they can't stay. Like,

"You either come

and they stay or you don't come."

Like those are...

Those are calls

I shouldn't have to have had to make,

but those are the calls that we had to do

at that time, in that moment.

And that was just unfair.

It was kind of a bittersweet moment.

We were like,

okay, we got this many people out.

But we all knew at that moment

that as the United States military left,

we knew for a fact that there were Americans still there.

And despite what the news was saying,

that there was 100 Americans,

we knew there was many more.

I'm feeling as if

a bit conflicted,

certainly,

because you can't

go into something like that

and think that you're going

to be 100% successful.

That's just the reality.

Everybody brought something different to the table.

This perfect scenario.

People all came together

and converged at one moment.

It really is terrible

to get those messages, because

I feel like the world has quickly

tried as fast as they could to forget these people.

You know, it's not okay.

I remember a member of Congress

saying to me,

"What's going to happen?

Like, we're going to be here

and they're going to still be messaging us

and we can't help them."

At the end of the day,

when you're getting

hundreds of texts from people

still pleading and begging

and asking for help to get out.

Well, you feel as though

maybe you didn't accomplish

quite as much as you might have.

We're still at it.

I mean, I can say we're...

we're not abandoning

our allies in Afghanistan. We can't.

It was sort of like

we've got to just get back to work

and figure out what comes next.

So just to throw ourselves

into, like, we're

still going to figure out

how to keep getting people out,

even if it's slowly.

And also we're going to make a difference

and really set the example for a welcoming

our Afghan allies to America.

Regardless of what they believe,

regardless of where they came from

and who they are,

it was just humans helping other humans.

You know, everyone came together.

There were some kids

that were on one of the flights

that I took out.

The first time I saw them heads down.

No eye contact, very quiet

fear in their eyes, wondering,

you know, who are these Americans?

And you know, who are these UAE folks?

Are they going to hurt us?

And then three days later, I see them again,

you know, at the refugee camp.

And now they're all running around and

laughing and giggling

in this, like, beautiful grass

in Albania on the ocean.

And it was like, man, like

these kids would still be in

Afghanistan right now.

But because of our group

here they are about to have

a totally healthy, normal life.

The seventh time was the first time

we were able to get into the airport.

And that was the time that

my whole life changed.

Finally, I can say being in

America is like staying

in a very nice place. Like, it is free.

You can do anything you want.

It's a place full of opportunities.

You can find what you want.

You can do what you want.

There is nothing going to stop you in here.

There's too much to say about it.

Like I cannot express my whole feelings

about staying in America.

I have never been more proud

to be an American in terms of more proud of

my fellow Americans

and maybe less proud of my government...

all at the same time.

Every person

had an obligation to do something about,

even if they didn't know what that was, like,

pick up the phone. Call your senators.

I mean, the number of times

I was just copying and pasting saying

when people are like,

I don't know what to do.

Call your senators, call the White House,

make your voice heard.

Like, you know, this is

people's lives are at stake.

People were saying,

you know, I'll go to Afghanistan,

I'll send my plane.

I will sponsor a family, I'll do whatever.

The generosity of the American

people was inspiring

and just something that I do

hope stays in my heart.

And I remember forever.

I mean, I can't name

everybody that was on the team.

Obviously, it was

it was really, really

inspiring

to be with those people

and to feel like we could make a difference.

I'm as proud of it

as I am about anything

that I've done in the military

or since the military.

I'm angry

(because A) it didn't have to be like this.

(But B) even after we got them out,

nobody wants to help them anymore.

It's not in the news anymore.

It's not in the stream of consciousness.

We owe the people of Afghanistan

more than we've given them.

The people who were left in Afghanistan.

I don't think we can ever repay

what they've done, because they've...

They're left with the problem.

It's a broken world, a chaotic place

where there's always going to be

people in harm's way.

And when governments don't respond,

there's going to be a need

for good men and women to step in and help.

This crossed all lines. It didn't matter.

Race, color, creed, religion. Nobody cared.

Everybody came together and said,

this is the right thing to do for humanity

and this is what we're going to do together.

What made you leave your family behind

and go do this?

Yeah. You know,

America is supposed to stand for something.

A lot of people

took huge risks

to try to make their country more like ours.

We think about risk here.

And we're talking about financial risk.

We're talking about pride.

We're talking about

what other people might think.

And these people are

talking about their lives.

I was either going to be sitting on my couch

tweeting about how

this is all fucked up, or I was going to be,

you know,

one of the 12 people

that was making it a little less fucked up

and a little more American.

What America is supposed to be.

So I just felt like I had to go.

Did you ever get to see all the guys that

rescued you and your family?

Did you ever get to meet them all?

Not all of them.

I met most of them, but not all of them.

I didn't get a chance to.

If they were all standing here right now,

what would you want to say to them?

I would stand up and hug them each one

and I would tell them,

thank you very much for saving my life.

And I owe

each one of them

my life and my family's life forever.