Everyday Hero: Air Force pilot reflects on withdrawal from Afghanistan

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was the largest noncombatant withdrawal in American history, and the final pilot on the final plane leaving Afghanistan talked to News 2 about his mission.

“We did things we’ve never done before, and you have to look at that aspect of the mission as an incredible success story,” said Ret. Air Force Col. Alex Pelbath.

Pelbath spoke with Lowcountry conservatives over the week about his time flying C-17s. He was assigned to command a squadron at Joint Base Charleston seven years ago.

“I commanded a C-17 squader for two years, and then I moved over to our C-17 Special Operations Unit,” Pelbath said. “I led that special operations unit for two years, and that was the capacity in which I went over to Afghanistan for the final evacuation.”

You may recall the video of thousands of Afghans and Americans at the airport in Kabul, trying to get out of the country as the Taliban closed in. There were mistakes in this evacuation mission, with many calling it a logistical success but a strategic failure.

The chaos came from the civilian population during the withdrawal, according to Pelbath.

“And they knew that with the Taliban coming in, if they didn’t get out and the Taliban found out that they are American sympathizers, then they were probably going to die,” Pelbath explained. “So it caused a mass panic among the people, and they overran the airfield on that very first day. Those famous images of Afghans desperately hanging on to that one C-17 and then four of them falling off of it as the airplane climbed away, that was a danger we were not anticipating.”

Pelbath blames the new administration at the White House at the time and their political decisions for the problems with this withdrawal. Setting an exact date for the withdrawal did not help either, in Pelbath’s opinion.

“Three takeaways from that. Take one; your plan has to be flexible in the military, and it was very rigid. We clung to that date no matter what. Two, don’t tell the bad guys your plans, right? Don’t pick a date and then tell the bad guys what you’re doing,” Pelbath continued. “And then the third one is there was a point in which we could have moved it, should have moved the date and we didn’t. Because of that, we left behind tons, probably thousands of Afghans.”

After what ended up being the largest airline evacuation in history, the military on the ground is what made it a success, according to Pelbath.

“We were sort of building the operation as we were executing it right; it was every day something new, and a lot of that fell on these 30-year-old, 25-year-old sometimes pilots making real-time decisions,” Pelbath said. “That is specifically why it was a success.”

The withdrawal held the type of chaos where leadership mattered. The last pilot out of Afghanistan says from a military standpoint, lessons were learned.

“One of my great takeaways is, I’m not worried about America,” Pelbath said. “I operated with 20-year-old kids in that crazy situation who behaved incredibly well at that young age, some of them with not a lot of education. That’s the future of America? We’re fine. America’s going to be fine.”

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