US veterans of the war in Afghanistan have expressed their anger and frustration over the government's decision to pull out of the 20-year war as the Taliban continues to conquer city after city.
Tom Amenta, 40, a U.S. Army veteran and Chicago native, told The Washington Post that he got angry as he caught the latest headlines on Thursday, describing the Taliban's take over of Kandahar and Herat and the crumbling of the Afghan government, all in the final days of the U.S. withdrawal.
Amenta, who plans to publish a book on his interviews with nearly six dozen veterans next month, recalled the death of his friend, Jay Blessing, who was killed by an improvised bomb in 2003.
'I mean, why did my friend get blown up? For what?' said Amenta.
'[Afghanistan] has never had a clean solution. But now that it's gotten hard, we're just going to bounce? It doesn't make it right.'
Taliban forces are accused of committing war crimes against Afghan citizens and troops. Pictured, Pakistani security forces escorting an ambulance of an Afghan man who died waiting for the border to reopen in Chaman on Thursday
The Taliban have completed their sweep of the country's south on Friday, as they took four more provincial capitals
U.S. veterans Tom Amenta, left, and John Whalen have expressed their anger and frustration over the U.S. government's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan amid the Taliban's growth
The U.S. has lost about 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, the most out of the four dozen countries who deployed troops there, apart from Afghanistan itself.
Amenta's anger not only stemmed from the death of friends - like Blessing and NFL star Patrick Tillman - but also from the U.S. government's decision to leave Afghanistan during such a tumultuous period.
President Joe Biden has followed through on a Trump Administration decision to withdraw troops from the country.
Now the speed of a Taliban advance has rattled officials three weeks ahead of President Biden's August 31 deadline to bring all troops home.
The Trump administration negotiated the terms of a U.S. withdrawal in talks with the Taliban last year.
Biden has repeatedly said he has no regrets about pushing ahead with his timetable.
Amenta said he was horrified by news of Taliban fighters committing alleged war crimes against civilians and Afghan troops.
He is one of many veterans voicing their concern and shock over the Taliban's rapid come back in Afghanistan.
The Taliban currently controls half of the country's 34 provincial capitals and is taking aim at Kabul, where the U.S. embassy is based.
Pat Tillman, famed NFL star, joined the U.S. Army Rangers after the attacks on Sept. 11. Tillman, a friend of Amenta, died on April 23, 2004, in Afghanistan
Taliban forces have taken over half of the Afghanistan's 34 provincial captials. Picture are militants patrolling the recently conquered Herat on Saturday
'It's just frustrating,' army veteran John Whalen, 34, of Arizona, told the Post. 'We knew that this would happen. Now, all the people who went and served, are like, 'Why did my friend die?' '
'I ask that question, too,' Whalen said.
The news of the Taliban taking over Kandahar hit Whalen especially hard as two of his friends died near the city in 2010.
Whalen said Andrew Meari, of Illinois, and Jonathan Curtis, of Massachusetts, were guarding an entry point at Combat Outpost Sanjaray when an individual entered the base and detonated explosives he had wired on himself.
'He was just a kid,' Whalen said of Meari, who was 21 when he died. 'He was so motivated. He was just so excited to go out and live his life. But he got killed. And he didn't get to live his life.'
Whalen also felt that the U.S. withdrawal broke an unspoken promise with the Afghan people.
'I’ve felt that there was this idea behind America. That America would make the world a better place,” he said. “But there are kids in Afghanistan that have only seen war during their lives,” said Whalen, who has a 7-year-old son, Oliver.
Afghan security forces tried to protect the city of Herat from the Taliban
Taliban fighters have seized more territory just south of Afghanistan's capital and launched a multi-pronged assault on Mazar-e-Sharif, a major city in the north defended by powerful former warlords, today.
The Taliban captured all of Logar province, just south of the capital, Kabul, and detained local officials, said Hoda Ahmadi, a politician from the province. She said the Taliban have reached the Char Asyab district, just seven miles south of Kabul.
The result is a growing humanitarian emergency and frantic efforts to evacuate western embassies.
Some 3000 U.S. troops are on the way to Kabul's airport to assist a partial evacuation of the American embassy, as staff prepare to destroy documents, computers and sensitive data.
'It's normal procedure to destroy anything sensitive before getting out, but it suggests that things are much further along than the State Department is saying,' said a former diplomat in contact with embassy staff.
CNN obtained a management memo sent to staff advising them to destroy anything that could be useful to the Taliban
'Please also include items with embassy or agency logos, American flags, or items which could be misused in propaganda efforts, it said.
Critics say this is President Biden's Saigon moment - drawing comparisons with the chaotic, humiliating evacuation of the Saigon embassy in 1975 - and even allies have voiced anger at the way the U.S. withdrawal is being handled
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