“To me, that’s nails on a chalkboard,” she said. “It’s so counter to how I feel at my very core.”
Two thousand miles away in Florida, Elena Gutierrez’s initial reaction was different, at least at first. Watching the chaos play out, the mother of four cried while mourning anew the February 2020 death of her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Javier J. Gutierrez. He was one of the last two U.S. soldiers killed before the Trump administration signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban.
“At first I found myself asking the question: ‘Was it in vain?’ ” Gutierrez said. “But since 2001, those who went over there to fight served our country with honor.”
A flood of heartache has swept across the country in a uniquely agonizing way for tens of thousands of “Gold Star” family members, each with a painful connection to the Afghanistan war by virtue of the death of their loved one while in uniform. Several said in interviews that they watched in horror as the Taliban swept across the capital and senior Afghan leaders fled, in a fast-moving crisis that prompted the military to send nearly 6,000 troops back to the war zone to spearhead a sprawling evacuation effort.
The wake of trauma created by the 20-year war includes 2,448 U.S. military deaths and 20,722 more service members wounded, according to U.S. government figures. Numerous intelligence personnel, journalists and other Americans also became casualties of the fighting, as did tens of thousands of Afghans.
Senior U.S. officials have sought to offer a measure of comfort to Gold Star families while defending their sequencing of the withdrawal and the Biden administration’s response to the tectonic shift that’s underway in Kabul as the Taliban takes over and the race to evacuate American citizens and Afghan allies by Aug. 31 comes down to the wire.
“I know that these are difficult days for those who lost loved ones in Afghanistan and for those who carry the wounds of war,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week. “Especially now, we mourn those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan. And let me say to their families and loved ones: Our hearts are with you.”
Each of these families has weathered the media spotlight before, as they mourned their loved one. But the U.S. military mission’s sudden ending — the desperation it has yielded — has rubbed old wounds raw.
Deanna Sartor, a mother of three whose husband was killed in a firefight in July 2019, said she found it “offensive” how the U.S. departure was carried out, with American troops almost entirely withdrawn by July only to be sent back into harm’s way for what’s proved to be a chaotic, perilous exit.
“It diminishes their sacrifice to just run out of country and to hand our enemies every piece of equipment and weaponry that we have,” Sartor said.
Sartor’s husband, Sgt. Maj. James G. “Ryan” Sartor, a veteran of numerous deployments to Iraq, was on his second tour in Afghanistan with Special Forces when he was killed in a firefight in northern Faryab province. His widow said she knew that even in the war’s waning years, the deployment was violent, with another Green Beret soldier — Sgt. 1st Class Will Lindsay — killed a few months prior and others wounded in ongoing skirmishes. But as a senior enlisted soldier, Ryan Sartor worked behind a desk more than he used to, and she took some comfort in that.
Sartor spoke with The Washington Post from Texas last week, as she moved their oldest son into college. It’s the kind of moment when she especially misses him, she said.
“In moments like that — milestones in your kid’s life — you always thought you’d be doing it with your other half,” she said. “Now I have to do it alone.”
In Tennessee, Seana Arrechaga said she had been struggling with the timing of the U.S. military withdrawal when the government in Kabul collapsed. She was in eighth grade when the 9/11 attacks happened, and her son, Alston, is in eighth grade now — a “terrible full-circle moment” for her.
Her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Ofren Arrechaga, was killed 10 years ago in the eastern province of Kunar, but even with the time that has passed, the chaos has been hard to watch, Arrechaga said.
“Watching it go down the way that it did, it took me right back to 10 years ago. It’s very much like Ofren died all over again,” she said. “And I had hoped that I would never feel that way again. But it happened. And it was mostly the why. If we’re going to hand all of this back over to the Taliban, why did we do any of this? What was the point?”
Arrechaga said her son asked his social studies teacher if their class would be talking about the war’s end, and the teacher indicated that he hadn’t been following the news.
“People should care,” she said. “And then they’re not even teaching it in school.”
In Florida, Gutierrez said she has felt some bitterness toward Afghanistan after her husband was killed by an Afghan soldier being trained by the American military. But as she watched coverage of the crisis, and saw the faces of Afghan children and interpreters trying to flee the Taliban, her point of view shifted to frustration that the Taliban is now in power and has “a seat at the table” in U.S. deliberations.
“I’m just sad. I’m angry and I’m sad,” she said. “It’s two very vivid emotions that I have right now.”
Taylor, in Utah, said that she found herself nodding along to comments from the president last week as he made the case that it was time to bring the war to a close and that additional generations of Americans did not need to be involved.
Her husband was mayor of North Ogden, a northern suburb of Salt Lake City, and deployed as a member of the National Guard to both Iraq and Afghanistan twice. She described him as principled and old-fashioned, teaching their children how to garden around his political career.
Jennie Taylor said that she looks at what happened from several vantage points, including a “heartbroken widow” and a mother of children who will never know their father. She also worries that days like the fall of Kabul may weigh more on her children over time as they mature, and feels protective of them.
“You better believe the mama bear comes out in me if you’re going to start telling their kids that their dad died for no reason,” she said. “You’re going to have to go through me to try to convince them that is true.”
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For families of U.S. troops killed in Afghan war, scramble to exit revives agony of their sacrifice - The Washington Post
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