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In August of 2018, after a year spent teaching in Afghanistan, I said goodbye to the Americans I knew there - other contractors and US troops deployed to the NATO base at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA). I thought that I would never see them again. I could have never imagined that three years later we would be working frantically together in ad-hoc chat groups to rescue Afghan interpreters and special operations soldiers with whom we had worked in Kabul.

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During those evacuation efforts, I witnessed military and civilian volunteers suffer the raw effects of moral injury firsthand. They spent weeks in distress, feeling helpless to save Afghan friends and brothers-in-arms, shouldering the guilt and shame inherent in doing something they knew to be antithetical to their core: leaving people behind.

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It was heartbreaking to bear witness to that pain with each incoming message ping: If you can’t help me, I will die. It was even more difficult to watch those veterans struggle with how to break the grim news to at-risk Afghans, how to word the text message that essentially said, We can’t get you out. I watched it drive them to despair.

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Recall the scene in Hotel Rwanda where the head of the UN peacekeeping force breaks the grim news to Don Cheadle’s character when he says of the massacres of Tutsis, “They [UN] are not going to stay, Paul. They're not going to stop the slaughter.” It felt like watching that scene replay thousands of times over.

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That is what inspired our piece about moral injury earlier this year. It was a call to action for military leadership to step forward and at the very least provide an acknowledgement of the pain; to not leave troops alone in trying to find meaning in all the sacrifice of a two-decade war that was ending in such devastation.

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Dr. Heidi Anderson, a licensed clinical social worker and co-founder of non-profit, The Healing Impact, works with veterans and spoke to that point. “Many feel a sense of loss and confusion right now, but unlike WWII where there was a ‘unified loss’, the withdrawals in Vietnam and now Afghanistan have led to ‘chaotic loss’”.

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Still, in the same way that the tragedy of the Vietnam War led to greater acknowledgment of and treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps the silver lining of the war in Afghanistan, and specifically its tragic end in Kabul last August, will be a broader, military-wide discussion of moral injuries, shame, and the restoration of honor.

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These phrases are not used arbitrarily, either. It was while reflecting on moral injury ‘one year out’ from the fall of Kabul that a former special operations commander approached me about the semantics of this particular discussion:“Moral injury in the case of Afghanistan is really just a sophisticated term for shame. One reason I don’t like the phrase is that it complicates something that most of us grasp inherently and may make it harder for those who feel shame to identify what’s happened. In my case, I don’t feel ‘moral injury’, I feel shame and dishonor. The question moving forward is how to maintain one’s individual honor as well as how to regain institutional and national honor. Honor is the antidote to shame.”

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Without a doubt countless others are asking themselves that same question. Dr. Anderson offers an answer rooted in terms of resilience:

“With moral injury, the life narrative is challenged. For example, soldiers are trained to honor the motto that they ‘don’t leave anyone behind’, but it changed in this situation because they did have to leave people. The good news is that it is not a permanent state. Positive adaptation is possible as long as they can find meaning in the change and if they can find ways to honor that motto going forward.”

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This year, many veterans have attempted to do just that. When I reached out to the team with whom I worked last fall and asked what has helped them cope, several talked about the support efforts in which they have participated. Some formed working groups to fundraise and send food aid packages to Afghanistan. Others focused their efforts on assisting Afghans resettling in the US, helping them to secure employment and connecting them to financial resources.

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Many have also advocated for legislation like the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would, if passed by Congress, ensure allies left behind still have a pathway to the US and help those already here to maintain legal immigration status. Feeling like they have been able to help or empower their Afghan friends has gone a long way toward helping these servicemembers heal from the grief they experienced.

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One special operations aviation advisor with whom I spoke told me, “It was the food aid packages that kept me going for as long as I did [last year]. That we were able to provide sustenance for families of those we knew in Kabul? That made it all worth it.”

 

When I asked how the withdrawal might impact his service moving forward, he reflected,

“We need to take care of our own because if moral injury affects one of us it affects all of us and that concerns readiness, too. We’re shifting from one 20-year war and looking at the next 20 years. Our future success will be dependent upon connectedness. [Like Afghanistan] we are again asking our guys to gain the trust of partners and allies. They need to know they are supported in that, from start to finish.”

*Originally published in 2022