Angry Planet - UNLOCKED: America's Moral Duty to Afghan Interpreters

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

America is leaving Afghanistan. President Joe Biden has set a September 11th withdrawal date and things are continuing apace. As America packs up its gear and goes home it’s leaving behind something far more valuable than MRAPs and M16s—people.For two decades individual Afghans have stepped up to help the United States and as it leaves the battlefield, some of these interpreters are being left behind.With us today is former Marine Sergeant, Afghanistan War veteran, and Purple Heart recipient Michael Wendt. He’s an advocate for interpreters and recently published an op-ed in The Hill titled “Getting Afghan interpreters out of Afghanistan isn't progressive: It's the right thing to do.”Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. There are also unknown, unknowns, the ones we don't know, we don't know. One day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be public. When genocide has been cut out in this country, almost within community, and when it is near from Britain, we don't talk about intervention.

You don't get freedom to people. Freedom has never safe-guided peacefully. Anyone who is depriving you of freedom isn't deserving of a peaceful approach. Welcome to Angry Planet. I am Matthew Galt. Jason Fields is stuck in travel. America is leaving Afghanistan. President Joe Biden has set a September 11th withdrawal date,

and things are continuing at pace. As America picks up its gear and goes home, it's leaving behind something far more valuable than MRAPs and M16s. It's leaving behind people. For two decades, individual Afghans have stepped up to help the United States. And as it leaves the battlefield, some of these interpreters may be left behind or stuck in a kind of limbo. With us today is former Marine Sergeant, Afghanistan War veteran, and Purple Heart recipient Michael Wint. He's an advocate for interpreters and recently published an op-ed in the history. Hill titled, Getting Afghan Interpreters out of Afghanistan isn't progressive.

It's the right thing to do. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Okay. So what does it mean when an Afghan becomes an interpreter for the U.S.? So when they sign up to become an interpreter for the United States, there I'm not clear if they get to choose their unit or if their unit is chosen for them. I was very front line. I was part of First Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.

And so our interpreters, they signed up to live like we lived. I wasn't on a major base. We lived out of patrol bases on the side of the road and in Afghan fields. You know, didn't see a shower for 30 to 40 days at a time, longest being over 70. And our interpreter was right there with us the entire time. When we went on patrol, they went on patrol. And in those days, our patrol schedule was generally 15 kilometers of patrol, and our interpreter would do two a day. So it's a very austere environment. They're signing up to do some very, very hard work.

And the most important part is when they join up with us, if we're in a firefight, they are in the firefight with us. The only difference is they don't have a gun. Right. This is a very personal issue for you. Can you kind of recount the story that you told in the Hill? Yeah. So on July 29th, 2010, we were running an observation post in some nameless area of Afghanistan. stand. And our resupply vehicle was ferrying food and water up to our observation post. And on their

return trip, they hit a 120 pound IED that threw the vehicle through the air. It was a 14-ton vehicle. Threw it up in the air. It blew a hole through the bottom of it, killed the driver instantly. the vehicle commander was our lieutenant, his pelvis was broken, the gunner took the sights of the turret to the face, one of the scouts in the back was launched 15 feet from the vehicle, and the interpreter who was inside, bounced around contained and playing ping pong on the inside of an armored vehicle. when it came to rest, everyone was disoriented. But our interpreter, Carlos, got out of the vehicle and found a rifle and loaded it and defended the vehicle until our reactionary forces could show up. And the Marines that were on site were able to clear their heads.

He was there throughout the entire thing. he helped us when my my squad got was the first reactionary squad i i had the corpsman who's like the marine corps version of a medic with me and uh we were the first responders on site and uh our interpreter continued to defend with my squad up until the dust off birds got there and we were able to get the wounded uh out and from there he was evacuated with them and uh i think the most heroic part of it is he came back. So two weeks later, he came back to us and finished out the rest of our deployment. Do you know where Carlos is now? No, sir. He was a, when he came to our platoon when we got overseas, he had already done a rotation with another combat unit. And I believe as soon as we left,

he was going to another combat unit. All right. So, There's been some news about this since the time. So you publish your op-ed on the fifth, I believe. On the eighth, Biden delivers the speech. He says, there is a home for you in the United States, if you choose, and we will stand with you as you stood with us, which sounds great, right? It sounds like we are going to be doing the right thing here. But there's some caveats, right?

Can you kind of explain what is facing an interpreter and the family of interpreters that are trying to get into the United States. So, yeah, there already, there has been a program to get an SIV, a, one of their special, I'm blaming it, one of the special something visa. But the problem with that is as of the 12th, they're still up in the air on things. first and foremost, there's 18,000 people in the pipeline to get an SIV. We don't have a place to evacuate them to. His statement that there's a place for you,

they're still trying to work out a third country to evacuate the interpreters to or Guam, but the United States government is trying very hard. not to use Guam. Why? So there's a precedent of using Guam. It's where we took the Hmong people after Vietnam. And I'm not really sure why they're trying so hard not to use Guam. They would much rather, it would be cheaper and easier to move them to like Turkmenistan,

Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, one of those countries that is friendly with. with us right outside of Afghanistan instead of getting these people airlifting them across the world to Guam, comma, but they're running into the issue that none of those countries right around Afghanistan has stood up. You know, those countries have histories with Afghanistan. India, who is their biggest, like, friend in the region, has not wanted to bring in the Afghan people for fear that it would. anger, Pakistan. You know, they surround Pakistan. So Guam is the answer, getting them to Guam. It's one of those things that the United States government is really wasting time trying to use one of these countries that we really just have to ask. We don't have the definitive answer that if we bring someone there, they're there. I want to make the stakes clear here. What is facing interpreters? who remain in Afghanistan?

Death for them and their families. If they're discovered that they have worked with us, they will be killed. They are seen by backers of the Taliban as traitors to their country, into their people, into their religion. They will be hunted down and killed. They've been killed in the past.

While we were still there, they would go home on leave the military. would call it, like leave between deployments with us and they would be killed if they were discovered that they were working with us. Just recently, I believe two days ago at this point, the video came out of the Taliban killing 22 Afghan commandos as they tried to surrender. They kill them. They've allowed... Afghan security forces to surrender peacefully, but the commandos worked with directly with us. The interpreters worked directly with us.

There is no quarter for that. How many people are we talking about? Do we have any idea, a sense of the amount of people that probably should come? So the current backlog in the SIV program is 18,000. of that, outside of that, I'm, I do not know. Those 18,000 should. Those are people that did work with us. They were interpreters.

They did work alongside the U.S. government. They should be brought out. And past that, we should get family if we are able. And the, again, I want to make clear that 18,000 number, that's the special immigrant visas, specifically for after. Afghanistan. That's not other people that's just the cue, yeah, the cue for people from Afghanistan. Do you think that this, we're a big country, we have a lot of space? These people were our allies for some, you know, for 20 years. Do you think that it should extend beyond just interpreters to commanders to commandos or anyone else that wants to get out?

Yes. I mean, when you look at historically, As you said, we're a big country. We have a lot of space. Refugees from the Somali Civil War are in Minnesota. You've got the Hmong people who are in California and Wisconsin. You have the Iraqis who were refugees from the Saddam era. And they're in Michigan. We have space. I mean, Texas alone took, I believe, they took 900 people. during the 2020, fiscal year 2020, which was 10% of the total population of refugees brought in. And I live in Texas and I can tell you that there's nothing in West Texas. And it would be great to fill that with somebody. There's a whole lot of highways where you're praying that you can hit another gas station before you cross over into parts further west. Whereabouts in Texas are you? I'm in Houston, sir.

Okay, my family's all in about an hour outside of Dallas on the east side. Do we, are there, is there domestic pushback in America? I feel like that's not something I'm really seeing here. It feels like everyone's kind of on the same page, right? Yeah, I'm not, I haven't seen or heard of any domestic pushback from anyone. I mean, this is something that America does. We've done it for years, multiple groups of people. We bring in people every year.

We are a great spot for refugees. And I haven't seen nor heard anything against the Afghan people. They worked with us for 20 years. It's really something that my very conservative and liberal friends both look at it's just what needs to happen. Well, then what are, what's the issue here? Why is this taking so long? And I feel this is one of those stories where I think we've known for about 10 years or more that this is a problem, right? But now we've got a pretty stark deadline.

I can't figure out why there is such pushback from the government. I believe the Trump years didn't help those four years where they were trying to just stop all refugee immigration into America. But since the end of that, I mean, the Biden administration has pledged to reopen our refugee programs. If anything, it could be some state department or push back on the state department from Pakistan. I know Pakistan is a place in the region that has a lot of power. and they want to exert control over that region. It could be stuff that we aren't seeing by Iran pushing back. They're another traditional power in the region that likes to exert their control.

And they don't want us meddling over there for geopolitical reasons. So I feel like people are paying attention to Afghanistan right now because the war is ending. And over the past. 20 years, even pretty quickly after it began, I felt like there was kind of this drift in public attention. And this is something that we've talked quite a bit about on the show, is that I think one of the reasons this war went on so long, it's complicated, but one of them is that the populace in the United States was not really paying attention, it was not engaging publicly in any way about this issue. Do you think that affects this specifically?

Are people upset about this? Or is it something that you're kind of constantly trying to tell people and get them to pay attention to? I think you're very right. It comes down to that this was not on people's minds. We got into Afghanistan and then Iraq kicked off. So no one thought about Afghanistan. We were focused on Iraq. Afghanistan still was going on that entire time. This, it's almost the forgotten. war, 20 years, and we didn't hear anything about it until now when it's ending. I think this is part of the reason is there was a lot of like drift in scope from the war. We got into it to hunt down Osama bin Laden. We didn't find him. We continued to look, didn't find him. And then it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and more nebulous until there was really no story. It was just we had people in a foreign country fighting somebody for something,

possibly drugs. And it just it became so nebulous no one thought about it. I mean, the last time there was any major change in the situation in Afghanistan, Bush was in power. Like that long ago.

And so now that we're pulling out, people weren't really thinking in the West at any point. about the people who've been working with us for 20 years. And so now that we've got a very, very hard deadline and we're pulling people out rapidly and lights are finally shining back on this, this dark part of our foreign policy, we have a good amount of the populace now being like, well, what about the, what about

this? What about this? What about these people? How can we, how can we just leave our allies? Are you familiar? I thought this was kind of a dark development in the last year. And now that it's been nominated for an Emmy and renewed for a second season, I have to bring it up. Are you familiar with the sitcom, the United States of Al? No. You haven't heard of this? I will about, I'm going to tell you something surreal and depressing.

There's a sitcom on CBS called the United States of Al that is about an act. Afghan interpreter that comes to live with the soldier that he worked with. And I thought it was very strange when I first saw it because it's one of these things that like is a new story that I've been tracking for a long time. But like we've been talking about, most people just kind of don't know about. But here is a three camera traditional, like think like I Love Lucy, very old school sitcom about this issue. Do you think stuff like that, I know it's a big esoteric question, but do you think stuff like that helps? Is that good? At least it puts it in the public consciousness?

I think it does help because it shows that this is something going on, that these guys that I worked with, one of the interpreters I worked with is now in America and living his life. And it took him, I mean, he was our interpreter in 2012. He got blown up with me when I got my Purple Heart. He was in the vehicle with us. He got blown up with us. And it took him, I don't think he got to America until like 2016. It took years for him to get his visa to come into the country.

And I think having any sort of camera and lens on. on this issue makes it more real to the American people. How is he doing now? What is he doing? He moved in with a, I believe, like a cousin. He lives on the West Coast. I know for a while he was working on an army base as an actor, playing an Afghan citizen for training purposes.

And I mean, he's still friends with him on Facebook, but I haven't I haven't really been active on there for years. So I haven't really seen what he's been doing. Yeah, it was really wild to see, you know, one guy that I worked with get out and come over and continue to help the American government. Do we need, is there a concern about, you know, I one of like a pushback I can think of in my mind is that we do. need to worry about the people that are coming over here from Afghanistan because that is, you know, where the Taliban is from. Is it possible that someone could slip through in this visa program? So that's why I would, why sending them to Guam is, is a great idea. So one, the special immigrant visa program takes roughly eight months. If it all goes according to plan, it's background

checks. It, you need to get letters of recommendation from people you worked with. There's multiple interviews with State Department representatives. But if we put these people on Guam, well, they take that eight months, 10 months, whatever it takes to get them this visa, there's enough chance that if someone does slip through, it is very contained to the American bases on Guam. Well, and the other thing I would stress to people was because this was a huge debate after Vietnam. right? People were worried about Vietnamese citizens coming over and bringing communism with them, etc. But the fact of the matter is that the kind of people that work with the U.S. government in their own country, it's a very particular, like I would say almost like American kind of attitude, right? Can you talk about like what motivates someone like Carlos or some of the other people that Afghans you've worked with?

So for a lot of them, a lot of the ones I worked with in Afghanistan, it wasn't like money. It's that when the Taliban took over in 95, they went from having a country where, you know, their mom could leave the house and their sisters could go out and public. Like when the Taliban took over, they changed the entire country. Like prior to the Taliban, it was a bunch of, like, prior to the Taliban, it was a bunch of, warlords and it was scary but it was still a country when they took over they ratched it down and took the laws back to the what sixth century and these these guys a lot of them their family they've had people killed brothers cousins uncles this is a very family-centric culture and it wasn't so much like a job it's that they it's personal this is this is their lives who are greatly impacted by the Taliban and they wanted them gone.

All right. So I am also curious to about kind of what your thoughts and feelings are right now as you're watching this war wind down. When can you give us a little bit of background on your service? When were you there? I was in Afghanistan 2010 to 2011. And then I went back the... later that year for 2011, 2012.

So I was almost there for, it came out to like 14 months, almost straight over there. How old were you when the towers fell? I was 14 years old. Ninth grade. I was a bit older when it happened. And I've never, I'm curious, like, how did you process that? Why did you join up? What did you become a Marine?

So this is, so the towers fell and it was like a big deal. But, and you know, they had a lot of guys. Were you, were you in Texas already? Okay.

It was a big deal, but like I was too young. A bunch of guys from my high, from the older guys from my high school, like went off and enlisted like that day. So I, as I grew older, my favorite author,

is Ernest Hemingway. And I started reading about him and about his service in the Spanish American or the Spanish Civil War where he went over there. And I was one of those things that I was like, well, you know, that that's how you see the world. You join up. You go fight. You have your little like Hemingway moment.

You come back and you write your masterpiece. And, you know, I did that. And I didn't come away with just beautiful words about war. And I don't know, it seemed like what else are you going to do? It was 18 years old. I had no money. My dad wasn't really around. So I was just kind of like on my own.

And I figured, you know, if nothing else, I'd get to see the world, do a little war stuff. So now that this whole thing is winding down, how are you feeling about it? So Iraq was a war that devolved in the, I guess, like post-war reconstruction. It ran into problems. So it became a proxy war from us against everyone who had a grudge. Afghanistan, it was a 20-year waste. I mean, I lost a lot of friends in Afghanistan over the years. Not like when I was there when my unit was in Iraq, I had friends over in Afghanistan,

in lost a lot of buddies up in Nowzad. And it's, there was no scope. We went in there specifically to find one guy. We went into a country to find a guy. And then we found him in a different country. And, you know, while I was over there, I got in the training, I got training by the DEA, how to spot heroin labs because I guess we're searching for heroin labs.

I got, you know, you get training on how to find bomb labs because we're looking for guys making bombs. But there was no scope. We weren't fighting the Taliban. The Taliban was crushed in like two weeks. And past that, it was really us fighting with somebody, whoever was angry. And we extended the war. You know, like I said earlier, this is a very family-centric culture. When you have a firefight with someone and you kill them and their brother's mad, their brother's going to come after you.

How do you think then this war should, how should we remember this? And is there anything that America can take that's good from this war at all? Can we make any good out of this? So good that came from this war is It's going to sound a little messed up But we got really It became very very clear That the big weapons that we buy

Don't work Because you have the greatest Laser Guided Missile But the guy who blew me up It was a shampoo bottle with wires in it Um Like HME, it's three ingredients.

We can make it right here. I could make you a whole bunch out of stuff that's just in my house or your house. We learned very quickly that for a long time, you know, Raytheon and Boeing and all of these companies are trying to get us to buy the new, cool, high speed, low drag thing to make. to make us better. And we learned that, you know, a 16-year-old kid with just an AK-47 and a goat can do damage, we paired down our forces. It became very clear that we don't need hundreds of guys. You need eight dudes in a black hawk and it can change the world, you know.

If you look at how the war went at first, it was. was air campaign, lots of guys on the ground. And it very quickly became a couple dudes on the ground. And then they weren't really doing anything. The guys who were doing work were your special spooky guys that show up in the night. Yeah, the operators. It was an operator-led war, right? Yes.

So is there anything that we can do at, home to help this process with the Afghan interpreters. Should we be writing our senators? Should we be calling? Yes. You call your congressman. I mean, cyberbullium. You know, it's one of those things that like, it's,

it's an issue that they don't care about because they don't, they don't have to see it, you know? It's, it's ugly. and this is an ugly thing to say, but when it comes to like Congress, it's shown multiple times that they're not really caring about, you know, foreign brown people. Like it, these, these, the men and women that worked with us for 20 years, they're able to be like, well, oh, they're this and they're that.

We don't really need to do anything for them. But we, we need. We need to help these people because they died right alongside our boys. They were with us through thick and thin. And they gave their lives just like a lot of Americans did. It's our moral responsibility. I mean, if we want to say we're the good guys, it's put up a shut up time. Like we need to do the good guy thing and help the people that helped us.

We talk about family values and morals and American exceptionalism all the time. We need to show it and be the shining light on the hill that we like to put out in our feel-good pieces and our movies. We can't just, you know, leave these people behind to be killed horribly by the Taliban because they helped us. Michael Wint, thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and talking us through this. Thank you, sir.