Page 1 - Aerotech News and Review, September 3, 2021

Aerotech News
Aerotech News
Aerotech News

Journal of Aerospace, Defense Industry and Veteran News
and Review
and Review
Afghanistan: Was it worth it?

Only those who fought can answer

by Bob Alvis
special to Aerotech News

Events this last week had me thinking about
some young women and men that I had the honor
of coaching on various Antelope Valley sports
teams throughout the years. It really hit home
when that tragic suicide bomber attack took place
on Aug. 26, 2021. Our heroes in uniform became
the faces of a 20-year mission; a mission which
attempted to change hearts and souls and remove
an ugliness from the world that manifested as evil
which, on 9/11, became a focal point of just how
fragile life is when the wolf comes to the door in
our own neighborhoods.
One young man I coached, who became a life-
long friend, is named Mike. I will leave the rest
of his name in the shadows for a reason that never
goes away, as you will see when you read on. As a
local high school boy, he spent a lot of time with
me and my family as we went to air shows and
military events. He came to know and befriend
many of the World War II veterans we would
travel with to school programs, inspired by their
stories of sacrifice and service to country. Mike
was the all-American kid that grew into an amaz-
ing young man. When the time came to move on
with his life, I was a bit proud when he chose
my old military service branch as his calling and
joined the Air Force.
It was around 2000 when he left for basic train-
ing and technical school, where he would train to
become a military policeman. Somewhere in that
training, it was discovered that Mike had a very
special skill that would change his life forever.
The young man who loved hunting with his fam-
ily had a skill with a rifle that caught the attention
of higher-ups. Before long he was training to be-
come one of the “tips of the spear,” as they say of
a certain class of American combatants. Special
ops are made up of all branches of the military.
Many of those elite teams find themselves serving
side-by-side with Airmen in covert operations that
will never make the headlines but are a big part of
why we are safe in our homes here in America.
On 9/11, little did Mike know that within hours
he would be on the ground in Afghanistan with
a special ops group of brothers that would take
the fight to those that gave us a black eye on that
fateful day. In private, years later, he shared some
of the incredible stories of sacrifice of his fellow Army photograph by Master Sgt. Alex Burnett
soldiers who would at one moment just be sol- Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai
diers with time on their hands, and in a matter of International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Donahue is the final American service member to depart Afghanistan; his departure closes the U.S. mission
hours, be facing life and death on a hillside in a to evacuate American citizens, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and vulnerable Afghans.
faraway land. Mike had many close calls “over
there” and today he carries some scars of just how
close those calls came to taking his life. We are and a chance to have some happiness. In the chaos ence in communities where the enemy looked no while, at a local dirt-floor school, a woman was
lucky to still have him around. of a nation at war, it was the American soldier that different than the innocent citizen. Once, when doing her best to give young girls a chance at
Mike also spoke of the people in Afghanistan tried to separate the innocent from combatants. Mike returned, he shared the story with some lo- an education. She did it at her own risk, as she
and how the kids were no different than the kids It wasn’t about politics and policy; it was about cal school kids about how he and a couple of his could very well have sacrificed her own life in
in America, who were just looking for a hand up young American soldiers trying to make a differ- fellow soldiers would keep an eye out for trouble See AFGHANISTAN, Page 2

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