Ben Shapiro: True Allegiance

Brett couldn’t honestly say he was surprised when he saw Kelly’s face on the cover of the New York Daily News , tears in her eyes. In the article by muckraker Jack Blatch, she said Brett had slept with her, that he’d promised to leave his wife for her. She said she’d been in love with him, had made love to him in his office.

Ellen didn’t even ask him about it.

The next day, Prescott called him to the White House. “General,” he said, a sad smile on his face, “I think it would be best if you resigned. We’ll give you a big send-off. You’ll go out a hero.”

Brett looked at the president incredulously. “What do you take me for, Mr. President?” he said.

Prescott’s eyes narrowed. “A smart man.”

“Then I’m a damn fool,” Brett said. “I’ve got men in the field, and I’m not going to abandon them just because some floozy is telling purple stories.”

Prescott laughed. It sounded tinny in the carpeted room. “That’s what I like to hear, General. A fighter. That’s what you’ve always been, right?”

Brett didn’t answer.

“Good,” the president continued. “You’re dismissed.”

At 1:00 a.m. the next morning, the phone rang.

“General Hawthorne,” the president said, “you have been reassigned, back to Afghanistan. Thank you for your service.”

That was last January.

Prescott played the situation beautifully, at least politically. He acknowledged that more troops would be needed, but slashed Hawthorne’s recommendation from eighty thousand to twenty thousand. He placed a six-month timeline on the surge, and pledged openly that Americans would be out of the country totally by the end of the year.

By June, the president accelerated his timetable and began withdrawing troops. Some had served just a few weeks on the ground before being pulled back to bases in Europe. The pace escalated. Week after week, more troops came out. By the end of the month, Prescott’s redeployment was nearly complete, with just a couple thousand troops scattered around the capital city itself.

The result was predictable—the Taliban assumed that they had the US on the run.

They were right.

Safe areas shrunk in Helmand Province and Kandahar. Afghan troops went AWOL, melting into the Taliban ranks, recognizing that once the US was gone, they’d have no protection. If there was one thing Brett had learned about the Afghan population, it was that they could shift their political allegiances on a dime. It was how they had survived so long.

They stationed Brett in Kabul, told him to make nice with the locals, smile for the cameras. They told him to follow the lead of Ambassador Beauregard Feldkauf—a major donor to the president, who for some reason had requested Afghanistan as a post. He then proceeded to bungle the job so badly that none of the local Afghan warlords would even talk to each other. Hoping that he’d be able to influence local policy on behalf of the troops, Brett complied.

Meanwhile, the Taliban moved.

Then, yesterday, everything went to hell all at once.

At 9:13 a.m., the Taliban launched three simultaneous raids on the outskirts of Kabul. The raid kept US troops and their sparse allies occupied for just a few precious minutes—long enough for a fuel truck to drive into the center of the city. The driver approached the crowded Kabul furushgah , parked the vehicle, and then whispered to himself, “ Allahu akhbar! ”

The explosion of his suicide vest blasted outward, through the cabin, into the enormous gas tank. Before anyone could react, six thousand gallons of fiery gasoline spewed into the center of the market. Troops rushed to the scene to find hundreds of burning human beings crying out for relief, the charred flesh of children smoking in the streets. The troops sprang into action, trying to administer aid, trying to save lives. They’d been hamstrung by the administration when it came to killing terrorists, but at least they could help victims. Dozens and dozens of troops rushed to the site.

They never saw the second truck, parked near a fruit stand.

Until it exploded.

Men and women screamed as white-hot shrapnel blew through their bodies. Brett could hear it all the way from the embassy. It was a classic technique, and Brett knew he should have seen it coming: use a first bombing as a magnet for help, then hit with a larger second bomb, taking out the relief force. He silently cursed himself.

“All troops back to the embassy, fall back to the embassy,” he shouted at his aide. “They’re coming…”

That’s when Brett saw it.

Approaching slowly but steadily, bouncing along the poorly paved road, a white van. The big black letters “UN” marked its side.

The driver’s mouth moved in a silent whisper. Over and over, over and over.

Allahu akbar .

The explosion rocked the building, blowing Brett off his feet, grabbing his lungs and squeezing the air out of them. He struggled to his knees as streams of Taliban fighters sprinted through the gaping, flaming hole in the fence.

Brett had just enough time to marvel in grim admiration at the planning—the Taliban had obviously infiltrated dozens of fighters into the nearby homes. And it wasn’t just the fighters in the streets: women and children had now occupied the square, and were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the embassy, providing civilian cover for the Taliban. If the Americans opened fire, they’d be blamed for a massacre.

When Brett turned back to give his men orders, he saw the ambassador in the corner, cowering under a desk, clutching his briefcase to his chest. He was screaming at Brett in his high-toned, Boston Brahmin accent, “ Your job is to keep me safe! So do your goddamn job! ”

“Shut the fuck up,” Brett said.

The coldness in his tone stunned the ambassador into silence. Then, an odd, keening noise emanated from his mouth. It rose higher and higher, louder and louder.

So Brett punched him in the mouth. Not hard. Just enough to stun him.

“Get your pansy ass onto the roof right now,” he said, slowly, glaring.

Now, Feldkauf nodded. Brett motioned, and the Marines pouring into the compound formed a phalanx around the ambassador, whose eyes had gone blank with fright and shock. The group moved toward the staircase.

The helicopter pad was on the roof. It was already overloaded—every staffer with an ounce of brains had rushed to the roof after the fence came down. Brett flashed back to the old videos of the last helicopter leaving Saigon, with all the wailing civilians attempting to climb onto the landing skids. Feldkauf took one look at the crowded helicopter, filled with civilian staffers.

Then he pointed at one woman. She was crying. “Off!” he cried. “I’m the ambassador.”

She was crying, too. “Mr. Ambassador,” Brett said, “we can get you out another way.”

“Screw that!” Feldkauf was nearing hysterics again. “That’s my helicopter, and I’m getting on it! And I’m in charge!”

The woman got off the helicopter, sobbing.

From the street, the noise rose, then fell silent. Her sobs echoed in the quiet, along with the whop-whop-whop of the chopper blades.

Brett moved to help the woman when the bullet struck her in the throat, tearing it open. She looked up at him, blood gurgling onto the roof. The blood pumped out, slowly. She tried to speak, grabbed Brett’s hand hard. Then her eyes went cold.

Brett hit the deck as bullets began taking down the people on the roof, one by one. “Move toward the center of the roof,” he yelled. “They can only spot you from the street.”

The helicopter rotors went transparent, and the machine began to take off. Brett caught Feldkauf’s eyes. If I see you again, you son of a bitch , Brett thought, I’ll make you pay for that . But Feldkauf didn’t see him. He was too busy smiling, a trickle of blood spilling down his split lower lip.