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[MUSIC]
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This is on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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All right, guys, this is the next episode in the botching Afghanistan series.
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And this is with Michelle Black.
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So Michelle Black was on episode 198 of this podcast.
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We had a very, very emotional but awesome interview where we talked about her book
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Sacrifice A Gold Star Widows Fight For The Truth.
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So she lost her husband, Brian, not in Afghanistan,
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but she lost him in kind of the Niger, Mali area in Africa.
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And she has a unique perspective as all these guests have in the series,
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because she is a Gold Star Widow, right?
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This is a person who has had to live with that as she continues to try to raise her boys
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and to kind of traverse through society and through what the future is going to look like.
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And so I appreciated her being able to take some time to talk about this,
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because again, for a lot of Gold Star families, this has really reopened some wounds.
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And so again, I don't want to keep her from you any longer.
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No fanfare.
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Let's get into it.
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Michelle, thank you for coming back on the show.
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I know that the circumstances are a little bit crazy.
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We're not going to be doing the same level of fanfare that we did with the last episode.
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But I know that a lot of my listeners would love to hear your perspective on what's going on.
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And we'll just kind of figure it out from where we start.
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But I just wanted to just initially kick it off with getting your overall thoughts
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as to what has happened in Afghanistan and what is currently happening on the ground there.
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Well, first of all, I appreciate you having me on, Kyle.
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My initial thoughts, I think I'm feeling what so many Americans are feeling,
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which is just devastated seeing the images from yesterday.
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It was very similar.
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It was like reliving 9/11, honestly.
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But almost worse, because even though it was not in our country, you felt so helpless.
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And it comes after years of sacrificing so much for what we hoped would one day be
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some freedom for the Afghan people.
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I think that when you sacrifice spouses, you sacrifice
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the fathers and mothers of your children and your sons and daughters,
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you hope that it is to accomplish something.
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You know, I say at the end of my book that, you know,
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greater than the sacrifice.
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So greater than all of these lives that we have sacrificed is the freedom that that sacrifice afforded.
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And when you see things like what we saw yesterday,
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it tears your heart out, not just for those people.
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But it brings up that grief because that grief has no reason.
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It really cuts deep.
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Well, I mean, we'll just kind of launch into it because this is the question.
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So we'll just kind of rip the band-aid off.
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But obviously you're a gold star spouse.
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You know, you lost your husband, Brian. Now he didn't die in Afghanistan,
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but he did die serving this country and he was killed by Muslim fundamentalists.
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And you know, it's, you have a unique perspective on this because you,
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you don't just become a gold star widow once.
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You are a gold star widow for the rest of your life.
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And as we saw in your book, sacrifice, it's how you decide to use that calling,
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because it becomes a calling whether you want it or not.
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But you can wallow in it or you can overcome and you were certainly an overcomer.
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But I guess what is your perspective as to what gold star families should be feeling today?
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And I know everyone is unique and everyone has their own emotions
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and they're going to work through this in their own ways.
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But there are people that are everywhere from completely crippled,
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sad to out of their minds angry because they lost a son or a daughter or a brother or a husband
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or a wife. And there's, there's the only guy we have to tell us anything is Joe Biden getting
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up there, reading words on a teleprompter that he didn't read, that he didn't write,
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didn't read beforehand. And then he goes back on vacation.
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And I guess he doesn't really care that much.
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So, and I don't want to kind of get into the politics just yet.
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But as a gold star widow, as a leader of a gold star family,
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what would you say to other families that are in this position?
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That's, you know, that's, that's so hard because the grief is so individual.
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And I feel like I've gone through all of those emotions the last 24 hours,
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even yesterday morning, you know, I was trying to write down my thoughts and rationalize everything.
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And okay, you know, we can't stay in a 20 year war and let's, let's be, let's be practical.
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But the truth is, you know, by the end of the day, I'm in tears and my heart is broken.
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And then the next, you know, I wake up this morning and I'm enraged and all of it has to do with the
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fact that, you know, we, you know, it's, it's so deep on so many levels.
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You know, my husband worked alongside a partner force as well.
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So there are so many different aspects to this.
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It's not just that we left.
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It's because that's, that's, that's not the issue to me.
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You know, it makes sense that we can't stay in these 20 year, 30 year conflicts and keep
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dragging them on that.
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That's not the point.
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It's that these sacrifice, these sacrifices afford freedom.
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And, and when we see partner forces coming alongside,
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we understand the concepts like no man left behind, right?
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We, we never leave a brother behind or a sister behind on the, on the battlefield.
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And I think about my husband partnering with the Nigerian partner force on the ground.
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And he loved the Nigerian people just as everyone in the US military members working
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in Afghanistan partnered with the Afghanis and learned to love them.
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So when we see images where we are leaving them behind to just be massacred,
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it's, it's, it's so hard to deal with because it's another level of grief.
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Because it's not, now we're not just grieving the loss of our, you know,
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I'm not just grieving the loss of my spouse if, say, Brian died in Afghanistan.
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Now I'm thinking about all of the Afghani brothers that were working alongside him,
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that he sacrificed, let's say, you know, he sacrificed to say one of his,
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one of his Afghani brothers, and now that Afghani brother has been left behind to be massacred by
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the Taliban. I mean, that to me would just tear me apart.
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Every person who made it home when Brian was killed, every person from his team,
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that to me brought home pieces of Brian. But if I were to then see all the members who,
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you know, even if the new sharing partner force who survived being massacred,
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that is just God, that, yeah, that just, that brings back all that grief.
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So I don't know what to say to those families, except I am so sorry.
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Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's too many things to be mad at, but there's also too many
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things to be sad about all at the same time. And so, because there's a lot of blame to go around
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namely with Joe Biden, because he is the commander in chief, so the buck has to stop somewhere.
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Even though if you listen to his press conference, you know, earlier this week,
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I'm not sure when we're going to be releasing this, but we are recording it on Tuesday the 17th.
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But, you know, we're going to be learning a whole lot more things as things go. But things
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are going to get better for these Afghan Afghani people as the days and weeks go on.
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It's only going to get worse because you can't look at the Taliban like it's just another country
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that disagrees with us politically. And we're going to go to war over some sort of a squabble.
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These are people that have a fundamentally different view of humanity than we do.
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And they're going to treat these people differently. And a great point was made in an earlier episode
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where there are people that were born in Afghanistan after the Americans were there,
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basically, you know, kicking the Taliban's butt and kind of moving moving through the country
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and stabilizing it. So there are people that are in high school and in college in Afghanistan
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that all of a sudden are not going to be able to go to school anymore. Like the young girls,
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especially like their lives are going to be completely irrevocably changed. And so I guess
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one thing to transition to another subject matter is no one's really talking about the generals.
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And it's because it's seemingly the generals all gave Biden the advice to not do this. And he did
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it anyway. But obviously, for those of you that have read your book sacrifice, which, you know,
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that'll be in the show notes, you should definitely go pick up a copy. You know, there's a lot of
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crap that goes on and coverups and mixups and moving around that the government does
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all to save face, all to make sure that people can still ascend the ladder and get that next job
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or that next promotion in a situation like this, knowing what you know about the ins and outs of
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that process. Would you expect to be there to be some fallout? Would you expect there to be
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some heads that are going to roll? Or is this going to be an extreme example of people playing
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the cover up game? That's a hard one to call. I mean, from my personal experience, I hate to say
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it, but I would expect a lot of cover up. I would hope that there would be some responsibility
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held. But even in yesterday's press conference, it was so reminiscent of the press conference I
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heard after the media brief, held by General Waldhauser following the incident in which my
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husband was killed, where it started out with General Waldhauser stating basically the buck
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stopped with him. And he made a lot of great points, but in the end, blame was shifted elsewhere.
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And I think Biden did a great job initially of, hey, buck stops with me. This speech,
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it was a great speech. There were a lot of good points, but in the end, there was also a lot of
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blame passed off elsewhere. And if you're going to say the buck stops with you, you have to
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actually accept full blame. You know, yeah, it's it's one of those things that I'm I'm curious to
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watch as well. But another thing that you're you're uniquely suited to speak on is how the media will
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react to certain situations because obviously in the situation that was surrounding Brian and his
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team being killed, the media malfeasance in some of the things that were going on in the media was
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was absurd. It was ridiculous. Again, you detail that very well in your book. But what do you think
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the media is going to do? Because me personally, you know, early part of this week, I feel like
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even the left wing media is is pounding Biden a little bit. There's very few people that are coming
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out praising him for his his leadership abilities or his decision making capabilities. There are
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people even on his side of the aisle that are like, yeah, Joe Biden's basically been an idiot about
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foreign policy his entire career. Why would we expect this to be any different? This is just
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going to be the bloodiest of all the mistakes that he's made. But from your perspective, knowing
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what the media likes and what the stories that they want to run is, you know, what would you say
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is what do you think is going to happen with the media? Do you feel like they're going to try to
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shift the media to or shift the narrative to maybe help Joe Biden or maybe not?
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You know, that's so hard to tell because I think I've been surprised this week pleasantly.
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How honest the reporting has been because I and I think the media does listen to military leadership
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and that was where the issue happened with the incident with my husband because the military
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leadership in that incident were covering up for upper-level leaders. Here, the military leadership
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I'm guessing are not covering up for Biden. They're just saying this was bad, but that could be because
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some of them went along with it and they want to, you know, I mean, I don't know honestly. So this is
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I've been cautiously optimistic that we're going to get the, you know, real good coverage on this,
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very open and honest discussion. I mean, and I think too, when you have images coming out like
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what we saw yesterday, nobody can can skew that. I mean, what we saw with our own eyes, you can't
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just write that off or pretend it didn't happen. Yeah, I think right now we're in a position as
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Americans to maybe take a little bit of a break from complaining about the things that we can
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complain about because as Americans, we complain about some of the dumbest crap possible, but it's
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part of the reason is because since, you know, 2001, right, since September 11, 2001, we haven't
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really had to deal with any issues that were like right here in front of us. So we've been able to
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make up all these, you know, different things to complain about. But seeing what the Afghan people
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are going through right now should be a constant reminder to people of how lucky we are to be
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Americans. Because another great point that was made on another show was that there are not people
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clinging to airplanes on tarmac's in America trying to get out, right? That's not something
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that happens. All these people that that hate this country and we're the worst and we're so
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bigoted and we're so racist and we're so all these things, you're here and you want to be here and
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you want to stay here, those people just want to get out. And I hope that there's some way that
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we can pay off the debt that we have to those people that all they wanted was to be an American
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someday. And so they helped us while they are over there as an interpreter, as an informant or
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something like that. But you know, time will tell over the next few weeks, it's going to be a crazy
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thing to watch. But as we wind to a close here, I know it was just kind of crazy to get you on here
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last minute. We were glad you were able to make some time to do this. Is there any other message
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that you would want to give to the American people or the Afghan people as we watch this?
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Just, you know, honestly, pray for the Gold Star families and veterans, especially, you know,
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the Vietnam veterans and the Afghan veterans, because it's like reliving so much of what
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we've all already gone through. But more than that, pray for the Afghans.
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Yeah. And for the Afghan people, you know, I think the American people on a whole
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are not happy with how this transpired. We are on your side. And this was not a decision that
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we were a part of. And we would not have supported. Not not this way.
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All right, that's a good place to leave it. Michelle, thanks for coming back on.
16:34
Thank you for having me.