I Fought in Afghanistan — And Want to Stop Similar Wars Before They Start
I served two deployments with the Second Army Ranger Battalion in Afghanistan. What I saw and did there disgusted me. Now I spend my life trying to convince kids not to join the military and not to fight these wars for the ruling class.
Rory Fanning at Bagram Air Base outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, 2002. (Courtesy of the author)
The first thing I thought of when I watched the US military’s C-17 flee Bagram Air Base in Kabul, with hundreds of Afghans desperately trying to leave, as many clung to the planes’ landing gear, was George W. Bush standing on the pile of rubble at Ground Zero in Manhattan on September 14, 2001. Fiddling with a bullhorn on an overcast day in his tan-colored windbreaker, he exclaimed, “The nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.”
A rescue worker interrupted, “I can’t hear you!”
Bush replied, “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
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