On My Honor: A Passionate Plea To Save Our Afghan Allies

We are obligated, morally and diplomatically, to act swiftly on behalf of those who face a brutal purge, asserts a Jewish former U.S. naval officer.

Dear Readers, 

We all remember the heartbreaking reports and photos from last summer of Afghan citizens, many of whom bravely served alongside American military personnel in the war against the Taliban, desperately seeking to leave the country. The U.S. airlifted tens of thousands to freedom. But many thousands more have been left behind. 

Heroic volunteer efforts are being made by American veterans like Marc Erich Wolf, a Jewish communal professional who served as a Navy officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, to keep America’s promise to sustain, rescue and resettle those men and women and their families. 

It is a privilege to offer this Guest Essay, written exclusively by Marc for “Between The Lines” readers, and I urge you to take his message to heart. Please feel free to share it with others. 

I welcome your feedback and invite anyone interested in submitting a Guest Essay to contact me at rosenblattgary25@gmail.com

Gary Rosenblatt

LT. Marc Erich Wolf on his return to the U.S. in 2006 following his deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

By Marc Erich Wolf

Never again?

Well, it’s happening again in Afghanistan. And now is the time to act.

As a third-generation Holocaust survivor and U.S. Navy veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan, I write to say that we – as Americans and as Jews – have a moral obligation not to abandon the thousands of our Afghan allies and their families who remain stranded in Afghanistan, fearing for their lives.

For the last six months, in addition to my job with the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC-NY), I have spent countless hours volunteering for the veteran-led Citizen Liaison Networks (CLN), a kind of digital underground railroad operating day and night to save, rescue, relocate and resettle Afghans who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with U.S. and NATO forces since 2001.

We are working tirelessly to honor a promise to never leave our Afghan allies behind. We are painfully aware that the combination of the ongoing Taliban surge, food shortage and starvation during a harsh winter could add to the tragedy we have already witnessed.

There have been numerous reports of Taliban atrocities – murders of citizens and of women raped and killed – as part of an effort to subdue and control the nearly 40 million people in Afghanistan.

The U.S. managed to airlift 120,000 Afghans out of the country since the Taliban takeover last summer, but thousands have been unable to leave. Some are fortunate enough to be in safe-houses where our task force is providing food, shelter and other social assistance as they await approval for departure. Others are on the run, like common criminals, painfully aware that the violence has escalated in recent months amid reports of beatings, beheadings and hangings.

Can America Be Trusted To Keep Its Promises?

Sadly, we have been here before. At the end of the long Vietnam war more than four decades ago, a little-known group of valiant Montagnards (French for “mountain men”), who were Polynesians living in the mountains of Vietnam and had chosen to fight with the Americans for more than a decade, were left behind to suffer at the hands of the Viet Cong. Their suffering continues today. The Montagnards numbered between 2 million and 5 million in 1950; today there are less than 500,000. If ethnic cleansing and genocide continues, by the end of the decade, they will be extinct in their homeland – a terrible price to pay for a people who wanted to be left alone.

We are more familiar with the fate of the millions of European Jews who perished in the Holocaust. How many of us have pledged to speak out in the face of the brutalization of innocents? Now is our chance to act.

If America does not provide safe passage for our allies in Afghanistan, we will have learned nothing from the last century – other than that one generation’s promise means nothing to those who come after.

I fear our insufficient response to those trusting men and women who now languish in Afghanistan means America can no longer be trusted to keep its promises. Beyond Afghanistan, the world is watching us and our actions, or lack thereof. Our enemies and allies are waiting to see if and how we respond to this test of integrity.

As a teenager, I learned through my involvement with the Boy Scouts what it means to honor a promise. The Scout Oath begins, “On my honor…” and may well be the most important words of a sacred oath to defend God and country.

Those of us who have volunteered to give voice to the voiceless are steadfast in our resolve to leave no one behind. We believe this will be the most important mission of our lives; and because the Afghans are like family, we would move mountains to get them out of harm’s way and bring them home. 

Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, is the most important mitzvah (good deed) anyone can undertake. Last fall, my rabbis at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan gave me a pass from High Holiday services to perform this mitzvah. Someone else would have to sound the shofar; I was doing all I could to sound the alarm for those innocent souls languishing in Afghanistan. 

Last November, I attended a retreat in Carlsbad, CA sponsored by the Jewish Federations of North America’s National Young Leadership Cabinet. Seeing my long face and graying beard, my friends asked if I was in mourning or had become devout. In truth, recalling that the Talmud says a man finds strength in his beard, I had let mine grow while devoting myself to help those brave men and women in Afghanistan. It was fitting that the conference theme was ometz lev (courage of the heart). I see such courage every day in my fellow veterans who are doing all they can to save and preserve the lives of those who deserve better. 

I am thankful my paternal grandmother, Madeleine Leibmann Wolf, was rescued from Nazi Germany during the Holocaust as part of a Kindertransport and was resettled in the U.S. by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). In recent decades, American Jewish organizations played a key role in rescuing a million Soviet Jews from the tyranny of the USSR and tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who dreamed of coming to the land of Israel.

Today, it is admirable that many Jewish organizations are, once again, focused on resettlement – this time for Afghan families in the diaspora who are leaving visa processing stations around the world. However, we are only clapping with one hand if we focus solely on resettlement. As the State Department phases out these “lily pads” (overseas processing stations), more at-risk families are desperate for safe passage to avoid starvation and the brutal Taliban purge.

We are hopeful an arrangement can be made to have the government of Guam establish a temporary processing facility and host more than 30,000 active-duty Special Operations Forces, trained by U.S. forces, which includes their families. 

Guam has a history of supporting American allies, beginning with the Vietnamese and, most recently, the Kurds. The governor of Guam, Lou Guerrero, has indicated her government’s willingness to take in these allies and is awaiting approval from Washington.

‘This Is The Hardest Thing’

Though exhausted at times, and often disheartened, I find my strength in knowing I am not alone, part of a group of dedicated, weary warriors. We were young men and women when we went to war, and now we are grown up, trying to mend scars that have been reopened, suppressing the demons inside from losses suffered during our many deployments. Still, this is the hardest thing any of us have ever done, struggling to maintain family and work obligations while doing all we can to save those left behind in Afghanistan.

How can we convince the world, and ourselves, that the U.S. is not morally bankrupt? How can we make good on our promises and create a groundswell of support for this vital mission? 

This is not a Jewish problem. This is a global problem; but given our history, the Jewish community has the moral responsibility to speak up and to act. Our sages’ mandate of centuries ago in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, speaks to us today: “You are not required to finish the work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.”

Let us be reminded of how we as a Jewish community have rallied behind the people in need in the past, from Moscow to Morocco to Darfur. On behalf of our Afghan allies, we need to encourage our government leaders to request that Guam host in the resettlement process, and advocate for reform in our immigration policy to welcome those who fought with us.

Let us honorably end the war, recalling that our Afghan allies were there for us then and we must be for them now. They are waiting. The clock is ticking.

“On my honor…” On our honor.

For information on donations to help provide safe passage, repatriation and resettlement for our Afghan allies: https://operationrecovery.org

 

Marc Wolf, Chief Development Officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, served as a U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer for Naval Special Warfare’s SEAL Team Two, with combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Marc is a member of the Jewish Federations of North America’s National Young Leadership Cabinet.