'All worthless,' veterans of war in Afghanistan say as they watch Taliban return to power

The chaos in Afghanistan as the U.S. pulls its military forces out of the country has hit the Fort Bragg community hard.

For two decades, thousands of soldiers flooded the country on numerous deployments. Many returned with permanent wounds, and many others never returned.

Joseph Lobban, 41, served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, including in 2002-03, when he was among the first waves of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers sent to fight the Taliban.

With the Taliban now seizing control of the embattled country, Lobban said Monday that he feels defeated.

"It definitely feels like what we did in Afghanistan is all worthless," he said. "This is the same feelings they felt when Saigon fell" at the end of the Vietnam War.

Lobban said he lost 34 comrades in Afghanistan. He suffers post-traumatic stress from his experiences there.

He says his emotions range from disbelief to confusion to depression, and he blames politicians, from presidents to Congress, for what he calls failed policies on Afghanistan.

"This is hard for a lot of us to process. It's very hard for us to get over the guilt or the grief or, in some people, even the embarrassment," he said, calling scenes of desperate Afghans trying to flee the country "a punch in the gut."

"It hurts," agrees Emmanuel Munguia, a Green Beret at Fort Bragg. "A week ago, everything was fine, and it's like zombies came out of the ground and took over everything. It's devastating."

Munguia said an interpreter who was wounded in 2014 while helping his unit was able to flee Afghanistan to Greece three years later. But two of the man's sisters and their families are still in Kabul, and he worries for their safety under the Taliban.

"He's fought right alongside me," Munguia said. "Without the interpreters, nothing could have gotten done."

Now, he said, his friend and other Afghanis who supported the U.S. forces plead with the evacuating military, "What about us? Like, we helped you."

"Almost seems like it's a waste of time and talent there," Munguia said.

Between 3,500 and 4,000 Fort Bragg troops were deployed to Kuwait last week to help evacuate U.S. embassy personnel and Afghan aides. On Saturday, 1,000 82nd Airborne paratroopers were deployed to Kabul, but Fort Bragg and Pentagon officials wouldn't say how many were on the ground Monday.

Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis said the government needs to do everything possible to get Afghani supporters out safely.

"Some of our Afghan friends have already been executed by the Taliban. The Biden administration needs to be moving heaven and earth to ensure that we leave no American behind and keep our promise to provide refuge to the brave Afghans who assisted our troops," Tillis said in a statement castigating Biden for the chaos in Afghanistan.

"President Biden created a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and he is now deflecting responsibility and not being honest with the nation," he said. "[T]he Biden administration had seven months to formulate a plan to safely evacuate Americans and Afghan refugees and failed to do so."

David Schanzer, a terrorism expert at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, said the U.S. was pulling out in a calculated way, but the Afghan army "melted away," leading to the current crisis there.

"Nobody in the U.S. government wanted this kind of chaotic departure. They charted a timeline. It was working," Schanzer said. "If you’re going to withstand an insurgency, the people have to be behind the government. These governments, and especially the one that has been in power these last couple of years, has not had sufficient legitimacy and support from the populace and has been even more corrupt and incompetent."

Still, Lobban said he's getting calls from family members who are grieving with him.

"My brother called me crying and apologized to me," said Lobban, who retired from the Army in 2016. "I cry, but what's it going to do?"