[Dateline 26 August 2021, the 24th anniversary of Dad’s death]

A mere five days ago, the Afghan national army collapsed. They’d been fighting the Taliban for years in a broad civil war, backed up by our equipment, money, and a handful of troops. Why did they cease fighting? I have a thought on why. Perhaps I’ll speculate on that in another post on another day.

In light of that, a massive air evacuation has been ongoing since then. News reports are saying as many as 90,000 people have air lifted out. If true, it’s a tremendous achievement. But it needed not have happened. Other courses wee available. Perhaps I’ll speculate about those in another post on another day.

Then, today, bombs went off near the airport in Kabul. At least twelve American servicemen are dead, and an unknown number of Afghanis and other foreigners. News reports indicate they were set off by suicide bombers, with detonation locations selected to inflict injury and embarrassment to us. News reports are horrific.

This is all so familiar to me. It was August-December 1990, thirty-one years ago, that Iraq invaded Kuwait. At that time we were residents of Kuwait, though we were in the USA on annual leave when Iraq attacked. Some of you might remember that, though because of our involvement, my memories are sharp. At that time you only had four news outlets, no internet, no social media, no You Tube. News was somewhat scarce. What had become of our many friends in Kuwait, American and foreign?

Negotiations with Sadam Hussein resulted in the release of some Americans while others were taken hostage to various military targets in Iraq, thinking that America wouldn’t bomb places where they knew their citizens were. The planes began arriving at our Airforce bases, and we watched people deplane. Every plane had people we knew on it. We even saw one of Lynda’s best friends, who had been Sara’s 2nd grade teacher, deplane in London.

Eventually, Secretary of state James Baker conducted other negotiations, and those who had been held hostage were released in early January 1991. On January 17 Operation Desert Storm began. The liberation of Kuwait was on. The occupation of Iraq, and trying to change it into a democracy similar to ours, began, Twenty-three years showed that they would never become culturally like us.

I went to Kuwait in Jan 1988, Lynda and the children joining me in March. In the six or seven weeks I was there without her, three different terrorist bombs went off in Kuwait City. I heard two of them. They were set off at a time and place where they made a statement but didn’t hurt anyone. The third bomb was being delivered when it went off, killing the two delivery men and burning a nearby palm tree.

We enrolled the kids in the American School of Kuwait for the completion of their third and first grade years. In the parents’ packet was information on where we would find our children if for any reason they had to evacuate the school property. That hit us hard. The Iran-Iraq war was still going strong. We sometimes saw tankers smoking out in the Persian Gulf. Lynda and I had a discussion: what would happen if the war spilled over into Kuwait? What could the US government do for us? We decided they could do nothing; we were on our own.

So here it is again Another Islamic country that we tried to help has blown up in our face. Iran in 1979, Iraq-Kuwait in 1990, and Afghanistan from 2001-2021. We send in our military, or our influencers and try to change them into a country that is culturally similar to ours. It doesn’t work. Their culture has been set for more than a millennium. I time of trauma followed by a decade or two of our influence is not going to change them. Once we are gone—and at some point we will always be gone—they will revert to their long term culture. If they oppressed women before we were there, stopped doing that while we were there, when we are gone they will again oppress women. We can’t change them in two decades.

They say we are getting out. I hope we are getting out. We could have done it better, a whole lot better. We should have done it better. I hope we don’t ever go back in.