The Hard Pill to Swallow

It's been a week or so, maybe more since President Trump decided to end our support of the Kurds and "withdraw" our forces.  I mean he's just moving them to Western Iraq but that's besides the point at the moment.  The point is it reminds me of this feeling that I still have conflict with and I'm sure many others still do.  The realization that for most of us, our service was just that.  Without point.  No purpose, no meaning just a total waste.  The wars we fought in the money spent, blood spilled and lives lost were for nothing.  Unfortunately, for many veterans, that is a sad reality that they are not ready to confront.  Instead, they rather continue to delude themselves into believing that in some way it was all worth it.  I saw this post by a veteran on social media, I decided not to quote the individual because well frankly it's a hard pill that they have to swallow themselves and not for me to force down the individual's throat.

"Yes, I must believe that it was 110% necessary and worthy of our blood, sweat, and tears.  If I didn't honestly believe that, I'm not sure I could live with myself or justify so much loss."

I honestly do not know what is worse, the fact that it was all worth nothing, or that one of my fellow vets is openly admitting to deluded themselves in order to feel better about their service.

One of my favorite excuses we still here is that our involvement in the Middle East is preventing terror from coming here.  "We fight the terrorists here so we don't have to fight them at home" they say.  One problem, that's total bullshit based on the lame and utterly ignorant assumption that the only reason they hate us is that we have freedom and that no matter what they want to come here and kill us.  People who make such statements never ponder what makes a Middle East terrorist do what they do beyond the simple fact that they are Muslim.  While I won't discount the fact that Muslim extremism exists because that is a definite fact.  What I will say though is that it's easier for someone to want to attack Americans when Americans show up in your neighborhood and start fucking shit up.  At this point even if it was all started by Muslims who wanted to destroy the Western world because of all of our freedoms like loud music, Dan Fogleburg, our Zima, hula hoops and Pac-man video games (bonus to anyone old, nerdy and overall lame enough to get that) we have caused enough mayhem and destruction that we create enemies faster than we can kill them regardless of cause or motivation.

The greatest of illusions however is this notion that America fights for freedom.  Let's be real, America hasn't fought for freedom since 1812.  Everything else has just been war for profit or cleaning up a fuck up.  Then you have all the assholes who make the smart ass comments to thank a veteran for their freedoms.  What freedoms?  We didn't bring freedom.  Not to our own citizens anyways.  We don't defend them either.  In fact, in recent memory the military has done more to oppress or suppress their own citizens than it has to defend liberty.  The people who say this dumb shit are still deluded into the bullshit hero worship of the meat grinder that is the war machine.  Especially when used as a mean to vilify people you disagree with.  Stop disagreeing with me!  Oh, and by the way thank the military for your right to disagree with me even though I think you're evil for doing so.

Long story short, there are a lot of hard pills to swallow.  My fellow veterans, I still deal with it myself but let's face it our service meant jack fucking shit.  Nothing we've done can be objectively proven to be of benefit to America.  Fighting them in the Middle East hasn't kept them in the Middle East.  Besides, the great majority of our enemies have been created as a direct response to the shit we've pulled in their homeland.  To think such actions provide the American people with freedom is just asinine.