For a U.S. Army officer who served three combat tours in Afghanistan before leaving the military in 2015 and returning to Vero Beach two summers ago, the images of chaos and desperation he sees on the television screen are tough to watch.
“It’s hard to overstate the human tragedy,” Indian River Shores resident David Collins said of America’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, where a 20-year counter-terrorism mission is ending with the Taliban retaking control of the country.
“It’s just a shameful mess,” the 2002 Vero Beach High School graduate said.
Collins, who now lives in the Pebble Bay community and is vice president of his father’s Tom Collins Insurance Agency, said he considers himself “extremely fortunate to have unpacked and reconciled” the experiences from his time in Afghanistan, and he’s grateful to have moved on with his life.
He admits to having “mixed emotions” about the way the U.S. is exiting Afghanistan.
Collins acknowledges that “Bring the troops home!” is an appealing sentiment, especially as the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that spawned the U.S. presence in Afghanistan approaches. But he said such thinking is naïve when considering “our global interests and the very complex challenges we face worldwide.”
He’s angry about what he described as a “total failure of policy and execution at the highest level,” as well as sadness for the Afghan people, especially “our former partners and allies left behind,” and the women and children who are “again subject to this evil, barbaric regime.”
He believes the U.S. could have, and should have, done better.
“After 20 years, to see everything fall apart in a couple of weeks is just awful,” Collins said. “It’s incredibly disappointing.”
Collins was commissioned after earning his bachelor’s degree at West Point in 2006 and went on to become an Army Ranger, rising to the rank of captain.
He’s nine years removed from his last deployment to Afghanistan, where he served with the 75th Ranger Regiment and participated in special operations missions as part of the U.S.’s counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts.
He also served briefly with the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division in a conventional combat unit that partnered with the Afghan military. His best friend – Andrew Pedersen-Keel, a West Point classmate from Connecticut – was shot and killed in Afghanistan in March 2013, just months before he was to be the best man at Collins’ wedding.
Yet Collins, who was understandably emotional when talking about his fallen friend last week, doesn’t regret his service and remains immensely proud of his contributions to the cause in Afghanistan.
“Everyone who served over there knows somebody or has seen somebody they were close with, or served with, killed,” Collins said. “We’re an all-volunteer force, and he was there accomplishing a mission.”
He paused for a moment, then continued: “What’s happening now is in no way a failure, or a reflection of some shortcoming, of the members of our military. Those who served in Afghanistan have so much to be proud of – for what we accomplished over there. It was a tough mission, and it was executed every single day.
“There were no 9/11-type attacks planned or orchestrated from Afghanistan for 20 years,” he added. “We denied al-Qaeda and other terrorist cells the operational room to plan attacks.
Afghanistan was no longer a terrorist sanctuary.
“But sanctuaries moved,” he said.
Collins cited the terrorist havens that took root in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia while U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces patrolled Afghanistan and conducted raids on Taliban compounds.
Many of the Taliban’s senior leaders, though, had relocated to other nations, including Pakistan, and waited for the U.S. to grow weary of war.
“I don’t know how to say this more artfully: For 20 years we kind of mowed the grass and played Whack-A-Mole all over that country, and that became the status quo,” Collins said.
“But I never saw a coherent strategic end state for Afghanistan.
“Was winning just denying that terrorist sanctuary?” he added. “Or was winning establishing a long-lasting, democratic republic with elected leaders, an open economy and freedom for its citizens?”
Collins went on: “I can’t speak for everyone who served there, but I don’t think Afghanistan was ever destined to be some beacon of democracy in that part of the world. So, the attempt to nation-build and democratize and establish a cohesive central government there – to the extent that was the mission – was a reach.
“But if an acceptable end state was to deny terrorists a sanctuary from which they planned and orchestrated attacks on the west, I think we were achieving that.”
In fact, Collins wonders if pulling out was the right decision, given the tumult and panic we’ve seen outside the Kabul airport in Afghanistan’s capital since the U.S. withdrawal began earlier this month and with an arbitrary Aug. 31 deadline looming.
He said he was “shocked” by the lack of resistance offered by the Afghan military and the ease with which the Taliban swept into Kabul and took control of the capital city.
“After seeing things unfold the last two weeks, you’ve got to ask: Was the status quo a better alternative?” Collins said. “Would our interests be better served if we kept a brigade over there, along with a counter-terrorist strike force to execute raids, as part of our global counter-terror strategy?
“Look at where we were on July 1: We had 3,000 troops and a very capable strike force in Afghanistan, and no American had been killed in 18 months,” he added. “That might prove to be, in hindsight, a more acceptable solution, depending on how far south things go over there in the next few weeks and months.”
Collins said the U.S. doesn’t have a “moral obligation to keep a military footprint in Afghanistan forever,” particularly when the Afghans seem unwilling to fight for themselves.
“I’m not sure if it was lack of pay, motivation or will to fight,” Collins said, “but after all of the training and equipment the Afghan military received for the past 20 years, it’s incredibly disappointing to see such a collapse.”
Collins said he fears the Taliban regime will capture, torture and kill Afghanis suspected of having been friendly to U.S. forces.
Even if such atrocities don’t occur – or somehow escape news coverage – Collins said the bungled exit will damage the U.S.’ stature and influence in that part of the world.
“Regardless of how you feel about the last 20 years, the way we’re leaving compromises our ability to partner and shape outcomes in the region for decades to come, and it demonstrates the limits of our power,” Collins said. “We’ve abandoned a lot of people who believed in us.”
Could it have ended better?
Collins said the withdrawal strategy was flawed. However, no one expected the Afghan military to dissipate and the Taliban to move so quickly, circumstances that made the process more challenging.
“I don’t think it was ever going to be a clean and easy exit,” he said, adding, “We spent the better part of 20 years hunting, engaging and killing Taliban fighters wherever we could – in their homes and compounds, in the mountains, on the roads and anywhere else we had the opportunity.
“They’re a barbaric evil that we hoped to eliminate from Afghanistan,” he continued. “Still, even after two decades, as long as their senior leadership lived and had sanctuaries in Pakistan and elsewhere, this scenario following our withdrawal remained a probable outcome.”
Collins understands why many Americans are upset by the news reports and video clips coming out of Afghanistan.
He was quick to point out, however, that until a couple of weeks ago, the withdrawal plan had huge public support.
Besides, he said, most Americans’ interest in Afghanistan and our longest war waned significantly in May 2011, after 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was killed by a Navy SEAL team in Pakistan.
“There’s a lot of outrage right now, but, really, Afghanistan hasn’t moved the needle from a public policy perspective – or impacted elections or how we choose our leaders – in a long time,” Collins said. “It just hasn’t been on people’s radar. It certainly hasn’t been a priority.
“Now we have all these awful images, and everyone’s wondering what happened.”