Spec Ops Sgt Predicts Afghans May Overcome the Taliban: 'Freedom Is Contagious'
It is no secret that the Taliban has absolutely no respect for women and children. Under the terrorist organization’s rule, Afghan citizens have and will continue to be subjected to horrific treatment, much of which is aimed at those two groups.
But before the Biden administration abandoned troves of innocent Afghans, American soldiers fought for 20 years to give them freedom from such mistreatment.
Special Forces Master Sgt. and Green Beret Tim Kennedy spent time serving with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan years ago. According to his website, the soldier and former UFC star was first deployed in 2006.
Two weeks ago, Kennedy went back to Afghanistan to help with evacuation efforts as a volunteer with the Save Our Allies coalition.
“I finally found an NGO and a few nonprofits that had come together in an effort to do exactly what I felt like I needed to do, which was go and save our allies,” he told The Western Journal in an Aug. 27 interview while he was on in the ground in Afghanistan.
In discussing his recent work in the country with political commentator Glenn Beck, Kennedy said he noticed a difference in the country since the last time he was there.
“You know when I went there, there were guys riding down with scooters and throwing acid on little girls trying to walk to school,” he said in an interview published to Twitter.
“Now, there were schools completely dedicated to young girls learning to read and to write. Walking through our humanitarian camp, most women spoke multiple languages now. That didn’t happen 15 years ago — that wasn’t even an option. So those are contagious … freedom is a contagious thing.”
“Freedom is a CONTAGIOUS thing.” @TimKennedyMMA tells me why Afghan women, who have tasted freedom for 20 years, give him hope that Afghanistan’s WILL overcome the Taliban’s oppression. pic.twitter.com/fcF2Fsbyro
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) September 7, 2021
While the Taliban has now regained power in Afghanistan, Kennedy still feels the work he and many other U.S. soldiers achieved in the country is valuable. He used the analogy of a doctor caring for a cancer patient.
“For 20 years that patient was treated by this doctor, and the doctor kept cancer at bay through a variety of methods. And over 20 years, in his old age, the patient finally dies. But that didn’t mean that that doctor didn’t do a lot of good in that time.”
To Kennedy, the 20 years the U.S. spent in Afghanistan were similar to that situation in that they were not in vain.
“Yes, 20 years later this war might have been lost, but we did a lot of good,” he said. “And more importantly, the good that was done — it’s a ripple effect, a butterfly effect.”
Kennedy knows from personal experience just how ruthless the Taliban is. In his conversation with The Western Journal, he did not mince words when speaking about the terrorist group.
“They’re brutes,” he said. “They’re gangsters. They burn people alive. They hang them from trees. They throw gays off the rooftops. They throw acid on little girls trying to walk to school.
“They are a radical extremist organization that is violent. There’s not an element that I have seen, personally in 20 years, that is a characteristic that I can embrace as an American.”
Stories that have come out in recent days seem to corroborate those descriptions. According to the BBC, the Taliban allegedly murdered a policewoman who was eight months pregnant and mutilated her body in front of her family on Saturday.
The Taliban denied involvement in the killing, and members of the group have continued to suggest they have turned away from their past brutality. However, mounting evidence of persecution toward women in Afghanistan casts serious doubts on those claims.
While Kennedy said the Taliban is still just as savage as it was 20 years ago, he has hope that the freedom Afghans have now tasted could give them the motivation to fight against the terrorist group, even without help from the U.S.
“I know [Afghan] girls learned how to read,” he said. “I know plenty of girls that are now pilots and engineers and shop owners and entrepreneurs and translators.
“You can’t stop that train once it starts going. I don’t care if you’re the Taliban and you’re a bunch of gangsterous thugs. Once that train starts going, you know, it’s a hard thing to stop.”
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