{"id":35533,"date":"2021-08-20T09:19:34","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T00:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/20\/i-was-there-to-help-the-good-people-of-afghanistan-now-i-feel-as-though-we-failed-them"},"modified":"2021-08-20T09:19:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T00:19:34","slug":"i-was-there-to-help-the-good-people-of-afghanistan-now-i-feel-as-though-we-failed-them-grant-edwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=35533","title":{"rendered":"I was there to help the good people of Afghanistan. Now I feel as though we failed them | Grant Edwards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our leaders made the mistake of ignoring it was the Afghans\u2019 country and they knew it better than we did<\/p>\n<p>I was one of the thousands of Australians who were deployed to Afghanistan \u2013 me, as an Australian federal police officer \u2013 over the last 20 years. Despite all the good we achieved while there, I now feel as though we failed; failed the good people of Afghanistan, especially those who risked everything by helping us.<\/p>\n<p>Last week one of the translators I worked alongside reached out to me in desperation. He wanted my support to help him and his family flee Afghanistan for the safety of Australia. I didn\u2019t hesitate because it was my moral obligation to help this man who\u2019d unselfishly aided me, and many others, at great risk to his own personal safety. While I\u2019m pleased the Australian government has started some evacuation flights, I trust their understanding of moral obligation means they\u2019ll continue to get out of that country as many of our proven friends as possible.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/20\/i-was-there-to-help-the-good-people-of-afghanistan-now-i-feel-as-though-we-failed-them\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our leaders made the mistake of ignoring it was the Afghans\u2019 country and they knew it better than we didI was one of the thousands of Australians who were deployed to Afghanistan \u2013 me, as an Australian federal police officer \u2013 over the last 20 years. D&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2424,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,43,61,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-australia-news","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35534,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35533\/revisions\/35534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}