U.S. Veterans View Afghan Collapse With Anguish, Rage and Relief

“I just can’t help thinking about what a waste it is,” one veteran said. “I can’t allow myself to think about how after all that blood and treasure, it ends like this.”

On Javier Mackey’s second deployment to Afghanistan, one of his friends was shot in an ambush and bled to death in his arms. He saw high-ranking Afghan officers selling off equipment for personal gain and Afghan troops running away during firefights. And he started wondering what the United States could really achieve by sending thousands of troops to a distant land that seemed to have never known peace. That was in 2008. Mr. Mackey, an Army Special Forces soldier, deployed there five more times, was shot twice, and, he said, grew more cynical on each trip, until he decided the only sensible thing for the United States to do was cut its losses and leave. Even so, seeing the swift and chaotic collapse of the Afghan government in recent days hit him with the intensity of a bomb blast.