Two veterans and a current member of the local military, all from Limestone County, sat down with The News Courier this week to share their views on the Afghanistan war and how it feels to be here years later.

Each served a different amount of time in a different place during the war, but they agree the war has changed them and anyone else involved in significant ways. They also agreed that the latest developments weren’t much of a surprise.

“For me, it was almost like you could see the writing on the wall,” said Jamie King, who served four years in the U.S. Marines, including a deployment to Afghanistan. “My unit pushed pretty far into Helmand Province, the south side of Helmand, and as we were going, we were establishing what we called patrol bases, kind of more rural bases of operation to patrol out of.”

Within three years, a drawdown began and the Taliban was taking back those patrol bases, he said. It may have taken a few more years for the entire country to fall under Taliban control, “but you could kind of see it moving in that direction.”

For Sgt. Justin Ruf, who currently serves in the Alabama National Guard, it was a deployment from 2014 into 2015. Ruf spent three tours in Afghanistan, and he also experienced a drawdown — this time involving base closures that had to be reopened within six months because Taliban forces were trying to take over what had been left for Afghan forces to use.

“Like Jamie said, we all kind of saw it coming,” Ruf said. “It was just a matter of time before it actually did happen.”

Being overseas

Randy Welcher, a retired Blackhawk helicopter pilot who served 24 years in the U.S. Army, was never deployed to Afghanistan. However, he was already overseas when the 9/11 attacks occurred and the U.S. began its hunt for those responsible.

“I was actually in Bosnia, … and I was able to apprehend a lot of Taliban operatives that were leaving Afghanistan for Bosnia when we started bombing the place,” Welcher said.

He said he had walked into a recreation area on a base in Tuzla, Bosnia, shortly after the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. He said there were TVs in the rec area, and he watched as the other plane hit and people began to speculate what was going on.

“I was a Blackhawk pilot at the time,” he said. “My unit was supposed to be doing general aviation support in the Tuzla, Bosnia, area there. We immediately got transferred.”

Within weeks, he was in Sarajevo, Bosnia, flying to pick up Taliban operatives who were trying to escape Afghanistan.

“It was pretty surreal,” he said. “Nobody knew really what to think. It took a day or two … for the president to get the word out on what happened and for us to get a really good understanding of who it was.”

Nearly 10 years later, King would arrive in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. He said the Taliban had already been pushed out of higher population areas and had consolidated in Helmand, so it was his unit’s goal to help push the Taliban even further out of the country.

It was around this time that Ruf began his first deployment to Afghanistan, in the Khost province. Ruf said he flew a lot of missions to support special operations and SEAL teams as American troops fought to take back what enemy forces had taken over at the time.

“In that area where I was at, there were a lot of Taliban training camps and things of that nature that we flew missions over,” he said.

Not a failure

Welcher said it’s not the first time he’s seen an American war effort end this way — after all, he and Ruf were each in Iraq, too.

“They did the same thing. They drew it down and it went back over to the Iraqis, and the equipment we left there is all in enemy hands, and they’re pretty much doing what they want with the country again,” Welcher said. “It’s like whatever we did there was — nothing came of it.”

He said he had hopes that the U.S. would be in Afghanistan for the long haul, because they promised the innocent people there that they would be.

“We were there for 20 years, and then we just up and leave,” Welcher said. “Where does that leave those children and those women and those families, that don’t want this, that don’t want this war? Where does that leave them?”

He said the mess left for the innocent citizens, on top of the people lost and the resources put into the war, all just to leave — “it’s just sad.” He believes, strategically, the U.S. needs a foothold in that region and that having one would have helped the citizens and communities of Afghanistan.

However, he does not believe the war was a failure.

“To define success or failure, you have to define what the goals were when we originally went in there,” Welcher said.

Immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, the goals were to break the initial foothold in Afghanistan, break al Qaida, capture and kill al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden and take down most of the al Qaida leaders, according to Welcher. But after that, “I don’t know that they had a defined goal.”

King agrees — the short-term goals were met, but there was never a long-term goal established.

“I was deployed when we killed bin Laden,” he said. “… Everyone had regained this sense of urgency within the war, like, ‘We need to meet these goals,’ ‘We need to establish this foothold’ — we had all these tasks laid out for our deployment.”

King recalled the celebration when bin Laden was captured and killed. He also recalled everyone feeling as though their collective goal had finally been accomplished.

“It was like these tasks we had lined up prior to him being captured or killed was already in place, and we completed those tasks, but there wasn’t anything following up after that,” King said.

Ruf was also in Afghanistan when bin Laden was killed. He said while the ending is what it is, there’s no denying that a lot of history happened while they were there.

“It’s pretty neat overall,” he said. “Even though the war’s over now and what’s happened happened, you can still look back on it and say, ‘Man, there was lot of stuff that did happen that I think overall was a good thing,’ such as killing bin Laden, capturing him and taking care of him.”

In addition, Ruf said, a lot of key leaders in bin Laden’s terrorist organization were also taken care of, so even though Taliban forces are currently in control of Afghanistan, they may not be “as big of a threat as they once were, just because they don’t have that knowledge like they used to have.”

King and Welcher also each emphasized that there isn’t just one person or administration to blame for how the war has ended.

“I think, collectively, the United States has kind of made some mistakes, some errors along the way, and that’s in all the branches of government as it pertains to foreign policy,” Welcher said. “I wouldn’t lay it at the feet of one administration.”

“I agree completely,” King said. “There’s been four administrations since the start of the war. Everyone has had their successes, and everyone has had their bad decisions made.”

The timing

This year marks 20 years since the 9/11 attacks. While Welcher was in Bosnia, King was a fifth-grader and Ruf was only 14. Neither was old enough to enlist, but they said the attacks influenced their decision once they were.

“As I grew older, it was a path that I wanted to go, serving in the military, and I just chose to enlist in the Marine Corps,” King said, “but 9/11 was definitely a catalyst to motivate me to do that and get involved.”

“It definitely played a factor,” Ruf said. “I guess it made me realize exactly what was going on in the world. … I grew up in a military family, so I kind of already wanted to join the military. It just helped to concrete my decision.”

King said he hasn’t given much thought to American troops leaving Afghanistan so close to the anniversary of why they were sent there, but Ruf said it’s been on his mind. Like so many Americans, he remembers where he was and the sense of America coming together.

“That’s one thing I will never forget, is how much America came together and how many people flew American flags in their yard when that happened,” he said. “It reminds me of the movies of World War II, when everybody had an American flag in their yard and everyone wanted to go and fight the good fight to try to keep America free. It gave you a sense of pride and accomplishment to be a part of the United States.”

He said he still feels that pride today.

“Lots of people were there and saw a lot of history happen,” Ruf said. “There’s a lot that happened and a lot that went on. … I guess every generation that goes to war has something major.”

Welcher said, for him, the upcoming 20th anniversary highlights not just the millions who enlisted shortly after the attacks and the tens of thousands of lives lost but the way patriotism rose and the effects the war had on those involved.

“Everybody that’s been in this conflict, everybody that’s been in this war, everybody that’s been in the service during this war, is definitely not the same person they would’ve been,” he said. “Good, bad or different, war changes people, and it changes them a lot. There’s no way you can live through what we’ve lived through and not be a different person, and not look at the world through different eyes.”