For 18 years Joint Base Lewis-McChord has played an essential role in a war that has been forgotten by many Americans.
by Kevin Knodell from Crosscut / May 27, 2019
Last week President Donald Trump’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, briefed U.S. senators in a classified meeting. Khalilzad, an Afghan American who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.N. in the George W. Bush administration, has before him a daunting task: to broker a peace deal with Taliban militants who have proved intractable foes in America’s longest war.
The White House appointed Khalilzad to lead the peace talks in September, and he has held several meetings with Taliban leaders in Qatar since. His closed-door meeting with the senators was Khalilzad’s first appearance before Congress, following months of requests for updates by skeptical lawmakers.
Khalilzad’s assignment is intended to be a final step of what has become an extended drawdown, initiated in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, who announced the conclusion of Operation Enduring Freedom. Yet, even as Khalilzad has been talking peace with the Taliban, Americans continue to fight in Afghanistan.
Among them is the elite 2nd Ranger Battalion, based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), south of Seattle. On its most recent deployment, the battalion lost two soldiers — Sgt. Leandro Jasso and Sgt. Cameron Meddock. Jasso, who died in October, was born and raised in Leavenworth, Washington, and enlisted in 2012. Meddock, a Texas native, was on his second deployment to Afghanistan and died in a hospital bed in Germany after being mortally wounded in a firefight in January.
The Rangers returned to JBLM in February, and current and former members of the unit told Crosscut that the deployment had been defined by intense firefights and relentless hunts for senior enemy leaders.
Watching peace talks is strange for some soldiers who served in Afghanistan. “If that’s the way we’re gonna get out, I guess that’s the way we’re gonna get out,” says Nate Schnittger, a veteran of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. He was a freshman in high school on 9/11. He enlisted in 2005 and became an elite Army Ranger in 2009. Since then, he has been deployed to Afghanistan 10 times.
There are many others like Schnittger who have served at JBLM. The base is home to the U.S. Army’s I Corps, which oversees almost all Army troops on the West Coast and helps make Washington one of the country’s most important hubs of military operations. Troops deploying from the Evergreen State have often played defining roles in the history of America’s longest war. The story of the victories and losses of the Afghan war experienced by the community in and around the base over the past 18 years is a story of the war itself.