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While most Americans watched the horrific events in Afghanistan unfold on their television sets last week, retired mixed martial artist, U.S. Army Sniper and Green Beret Tim Kennedy hopped a flight straight into the abyss.
“As the scramble by the US and its allies to airlift people out of Kabul airport becomes more desperate, this veteran of the war in Afghanistan is heading back – to help with the evacuation of Americans and Afghans,’ the BBC reported last Tuesday.
“He’s supporting the efforts of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) including No One Left Behind, which is committed to ensuring the US keeps its promise to give visas to Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who worked for the US military.”
In tweets posted three days later, he pushed back on criticism (presumably from leftists) by noting that he was working with a volunteer team (presumably of veterans).
Look:
I appreciate that some people are upset with my presence in Afghanistan. I have no desire to lash out. I assume they are trying to accomplish their missions the same way I am trying to accomplish mine, and I love them for it. A few things, though:
— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
1) I was not running around on my own. The Army doesn’t care that I have a lot of followers. It’s their battle space. The group I was attached to as a volunteer was listed in the command center as a supporting element. We were part of the team. Were that not the case,
— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
I would not have been allowed to run around outside the wire.
2) People have referred to it as “Tim Kennedy’s Team.” That’s false and does a disservice to the the talented Team Leader a JPRA (joint personnel recovery agent) who has 10 years more experience than I do,— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
as well as my incredible teammates. All of whom were extraordinarily talented. I have been in SF for 17 years and I didn’t deserve to be with them. I was proud to be a part of it. I’m proud of our work.
3) We did not bring in “buses of unverified Afghans”.— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
We had multiple target sets coming from DC, as well as cultivated in our JOC. 300/500 we brought through the gate were orphans. Another 100 were Nazarene. The remainder were high value individuals assigned to us from higher echelon units,
— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
and family members of crews that were flying our chartered planes all week.
4) A few guys posted that they were unable to get their own personnel through the gate as a result of our buses. I’m very sorry about that. If the roles were reversed, I would be furious at me too.— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
All I can say is that I was executing my assigned mission in order to save as many people as possible. When you’re a good person, and you’re motivated to help, passion runs high. They wouldn’t be as good as they are if they didn’t care.
— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 27, 2021
It’s not clear whether he was still in Afghanistan as of Sunday.
What’s known is that by Saturday, he’d already helped rescue over 8,900 people, as reported by Fox News following an interview with him.
In the interview, he went into greater detail about the mission.
“We had a very clear mission in who we were trying to identify and get out, and American citizens were number one. It was a landscape and a battlefield that was something that I had never experienced before and it was absolute mayhem,” he said.
Especially when bombs were detonated at the airport in Kabul on Thursday.
“I was on a full C-17 loading Afghans when the bomb went off. You can’t stop. You’re in an aircraft with 500 people’s lives right there. The aircrew were incredible and we were just focused on [completing the mission],” he said.
A mission that was intensely difficult.
“The horrors of people getting to the airport is indescribable,” he said, noting how “dangerous it is to get them through the gates when there is hundreds of thousands of people trying to push their way through.”
He added that he saw things you “wouldn’t want to happen in your worst nightmare,” including flash bangs, “bullets going off,” “people being beaten and trampled to death” and — horrifyingly — “babies hanging in concertina wire.”
Afghanistan Taliban Crisis,
area around Kabul airport “incredibly crowded”
huge crowds continued to throng the gates of Kabul airport pic.twitter.com/6cfCD3KZY8— Alberto Allen (@albertoallen) August 26, 2021
Kennedy then described one operation in which his group almost got caught by the Taliban.
“Right when I got on the ground, we were doing a reconnaissance of a new rat line, a spot that we were planning on that evening trying to smuggle some more people through. And as I went around a corner, I look up on top of a building, and there is a Taliban listening post/observation post with trained observers that were looking into the airfield to try and identify where all of the American forces were,” he said.
“They had a sniper rifle up there, and obviously their job was to be prepared to deal death against American forces and Afghans that were trying to get out.”
Speaking of the Taliban, he also pushed back on the Biden administration’s notion that there’s a distinction between the Taliban and ISIS.
“ISIS-K and the Taliban are the same thing. The distinction between the two, when you look at who ISIS-K is, those were the original Mujahideen Taliban founders,” he said.
“It’s the radical Islamic wing of the Taliban. ISIS-K is a branch of the Taliban. It’s the same people. … The assumption that you can distinguish between the two is ludicrous. They are different feathers from the same bird.”
The Taliban are now angels in the eyes of @CNN & others whilst ISIS K are demons.Together with Al Qaeda are they not all one & the same?Have they not all shed innocent blood & are they not all terrorists?When did the narrative change?Are some terrorists more equal than others?1/
— Femi Fani-Kayode (@realFFK) August 28, 2021
Someone may want to tell that to President Joe Biden, who for some inexplicable reason has chosen to trust the Taliban to secure the airport in Kabul.
Bad idea, according to Kennedy.
“The Taliban wanted all people going into the Kabul airport to go through the south gate entrance where they had a checkpoint and they could check everybody that was coming in and if it was one of their high valued targets, they’re not going to let you in … they’re just going to kill you,” he said.
Kennedy also spoke with Fox during a separate interview a day before he flew out:
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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