Originally Posted by
glocktogo
A little over 8 years ago it was early 2011. A decade had passed since 9/11 and a good friend of mine was deploying as a scout/sniper to Afghanistan. In my tired old eyes, he was a youngling I'd trained to shoot fast and hard with a pistol during many days training and competing on a square range. Having been deployed in the ME many, many years before and knowing he may soon do likewise, we talked often about military ops and things like patriotism. I could see in him what I had been all those years ago, still gung-ho and willing to "defend America" halfway across the world.
When he got orders to go to Afghanistan, one of my final talks with him was about the last man. We'd been in Afghanistan for a decade at that point and it looked far less like pursuing bin Laden (who hadn't been in Afghanistan in years) and more like Russia's Afghanistan war redux. So I talked at length about how we weren't actually accomplishing anything there, that no one ever remembers the last man killed in the last days of a war, and to not skyline himself for country or glory, because the country doesn't need it and there's no glory in being the last man to die. I specifically told him to ostensibly follow orders, but that no one will care if he comes back to base camp from patrol having neither seen nor engaged any hostiles. Just make it look good and come home alive.
On 9 September, 2011, he and two others in his platoon were killed in a Taliban ambush. For what? In the fall of 2011, what was strategically important to the United States in Paktya, Afghanistan? Not a ****ing thing. Did any of those goat ****ers shooting holes in him ever meet bin Laden or al Zawahiri? Nope. Were they fighting for them? Nope. They could've just as easily been fighting the Russians or the British or Alexander the Great. Wash, rinse, repeat...
So what did we gain from his death? Nothing. In exchange for all the gunpowder we'll never burn together and all the beer we'll never drink afterwards, I have a black bracelet on my wrist and a memorial highway sign with his name on it I drive past every day on my way home from work. That's the worst trade in the history of trades. Consider the jading of glocktogo 100% complete and then some.
I tend to think that out of all the indigenous peoples in that region, the Kurds are likely the least offensive. They're stateless, relatively powerless and have been persecuted for centuries. They mostly just want to be left alone. The people aligned against them are ISIS, the Turks, possibly some Syrian hostiles and all the leftovers in Southern Iraq? Sorry, I see no good guys on the roster. So if anyone asked me whether I'd recommend joining the military to "defend our country" and help spread "democracy", I'd tell them they've lost their ****ing minds. Sure if you don't have any opportunities whatsoever, by all means join the .mil in a non-combat, mostly stateside support role and save some bank while using them for all the education benefits you can get, but an open ended contract? Yeah, that's gonna be a no from me dawg.
When an actual existential threat to the United States from without appears on the far horizon I may change my tune. Till then I'm all for pulling back and nuking it from orbit, just to make sure.
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