18 August 2021
Panama City, Panama — Central America

In 2001, I was with my old Green Beret friend Steve Shaulis. At his home in Florida. We had gone through Green Beret selection together, Defense Language Institute, and other interesting places.

And so there we were. Florida. Six months before the 9/11 attack. Little did we know that al Qaeda attackers were not far away from us in Florida.

We were preparing to scuba dive in the night Atlantic under a full moon. We walked off the beach into the blackness of the sea.

That night, back from the depths, faxes were coming in from Pakistan and/or Afghanistan. A fax rattled in from Steve’s friend, author Ahmad Rashid.

Steve already did business in Afghanistan and was often there, constantly asking me to come along, though I never did. Instead, I was in places like Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica. Steve would tell stories of how the Taliban thought he was a professional wrestler. Taliban were not supposed to watch television but they did, and they loved wrestling, and Steve would talk like he know all the champions.

When Taliban at checkpoints found music tapes, they would take out the cassettes, rip out the tapes and wrap those tapes around car antennae. No music allowed. Taliban censored the old fashioned way.

And Steve would often say Afghanistan and the Taliban would boil over. We both paid close attention to al Qaeda. Steve knew where al Qaeda lived in Afghanistan. And the home of Mullah Omar. The Taliban leader.

And so, Steve handed me this book, TALIBAN, saying reading this was prep for the future. I read it.

When the second airplane hit a Twin Tower, I called Steve. He still knew where they were. This was passed along. Nobody ever acted on the information. I will never forget that. Perfect targeting information was ignored.

Later, Mullah Omar’s home was bombed. Steve, back in Afghanistan, went to his home. Found a false roof that had been made of truck tires. When American bombs hit the roof, the roof did not collapse. Tires and false roof were spread around the compound. Steve walked inside and found the ceiling spalded but not penetrated.

We never got Mullah Omar. He seems to have died of natural causes years later. And years later, I was in a nearby village as American taxpayer dollars rebuilt his mosque. I wrote that correctly. We rebuild Mullah Omar’s mosque.

I’ll say it again. We. America. Rebuilt. The Taliban leader’s mosque. This was about 2011. I was with the unit that did this.

Many things happened. I was in so many firefights and bombings and rocket and mortar attacks that it was like a looping war movie. The idea that war is 99% boredom is bullshit. My wars were not boring. Someone else’s might have been. My wars were a lot of war.

Steve had offices all over Afghanistan. When the clown General Stanley McChrystal declared jihad on me instead of Taliban, I simply went with Steve’s people and others. His office got blown up in Kandahar barely missing me. The Taliban were not after Steve but his neighbor. Chemonics. But truck bombs are big and wrecked the neighborhood. If you websearch you will find this attack. I think it was about April 2010 in Kandahar. I don’t remember.

There were so many bombs and firefights they all started to blend. Taliban don’t quit. And people who don’t know much would say, “Let’s send the SEALs! Send the A-10s.” SEALs got loads of name recognition due to the movie thing. We sent every Delta and Green Beret and Ranger and SEAL and Marine and infantryman and A-10 in the arsenal. A-10s were rolling in all the time. A-10 and drone and helicopter strikes was so common that you hardly would look up to see.

Steve would send his airplanes for me to get me around. When we were rolling alone, we alerted US forces so we didn’t get killed. We’d bring brightly colored trashcan lids as recognition symbols, that sort of thing.

I had an amazing front row seat to ultimate incompetence. So amazing. The story untold. Not by our low-ranking people. They were great, on whole. But the higher the rank and into DC and London…it was bad. Really bad.

When Ahmad Rashid’s book came out in 2001 before the war, it was not a bestseller. A university press with a tiny print run. When 9/11 exploded, likely only a thousand people had read TALIBAN. Steve was probably the first reader. Steve had been with the author Ahmad Rashid in Pakistan and Afghanistan during research. I was likely one of the first hundred readers of TALIBAN — still months before the 9/11 attack.

And the towers fell. TALIBAN became essential reading. Became a bestseller. And I became a famous war correspondent.

It all seemed so sad. So obvious. Like the ending still unfolding with US citizens trapped and a killing field unfolding.

But today is not the ending. Only the end of the American war. This is a new beginning and will continue.

Now watch Taiwan and the islands. And watch the streets of America. It all seems so obvious.

Make sure to read the attached final paragraph from TALIBAN. This is the very last paragraph in the original book TALIBAN. This paragraph echoed in my mind during the war. The author was right: