it s not too late. the former general secretaries and ambassadors say more troops can hold the line, victory is around the corner. but the speed of the taliban s advance makes clear that this outcome was always inevitable. joining our discussion now is timothy kudo, a former marine captain who served in iraq and afghanistan. thank you very much for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. i read in your piece that it is your outfit, your former marine unit that was sent to secure the airport in afghanistan. and you say in your piece you wish you could be there. what are those feelings like tonight? i think it s very mixed to see what s been unfolding over the past three or four days. i think for those of us who gave the better parts of our youths and lives to that, we hope this thing that would be the most meaningful thing we would do in our lives would amount to something.
The Pentagon and the Generals Wanted This Disastrous War
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I fought in Afghanistan. I still wonder, was it worth it?
on withdrawing from Afghan
Timothy Kudo, a former Marine captain who served in the Afghanistan war, recalls a letter he wrote on the eve of his deployment in case he was killed. “The first paragraph reads, ‘It was worth it’, then it continues about honor, duty and patriotism before closing with a final farewell and a request for burial at Arlington,” he writes in The New York Times. “‘It was worth it’. The words reverberate. The weight feels a little heavier, and I whisper them like a mantra and continue marching. But now the war is ending, and those words are enigmatic.” As the US pulls its troops out of Afghanistan, Kudo fears that “the most meaningful part of my life – and only its prologue – is being erased by time, by the enemy and even by my country”. He wonders: “Was it worth it? Everything has been because I’d been able to answer yes to that question. But what if the answer is no?”