Some questions on Quora just cannot be avoided…
Posted 9Jul18.
Ha.
In 2004, I found a copy of The Other Side of the Mountain during my first deployment in Afghanistan. Fascinating book, and I highly recommend it to anyone heading that way or presently there. For the Soviet soldiers, it turned out to be a lost cause, much like the British soldiers before them and pretty much every occupying force that has ever had any lofty goals of subjugating or influencing the various tribes that make up the country.
Did I consider it a lost cause?
Then, as now, it wasn’t my place to serve in support of national policies I approved of. I swore an oath of enlistment for service and that’s that. I felt that being in Afghanistan was not a matter of following in the clumsy footsteps of failed foreign influence in that country, but just a place I went to.. with the folks I served with.
Same as Iraq, not too long after. I personally felt that starting another large operation under dubious pretenses to be a mistake that would haunt us for years. Yet, I still went in 2006 for what turned into a 15-month deployment and 2009 for a 10-month deployment.
I didn’t hide out in a TRADOC unit… I didn’t seek out a nondeployable status… I didn’t ETS (even after not getting paid for the 6 months after returning from Afghanistan, but that’s another story for another time). I sucked it up and went, leaving behind my 6-month-old son to do what many others didn’t want to do.
The difference, Anonymous OP, is that many of the ones who I went with each time were a fraction of our population who viewed service in a way that, by your question, you might never get. We went because the people we loved relied on us to serve regardless of personal politics. We went because people depended on us to go — whether it was family or our brothers and sisters in arms (which is damned-near, if not better at times, than blood relationships).
Do we know that we often fight for lost causes?
Sure, but it will never stop us because our causes are much different than geopolitics. It always has been the case for soldiers, and it always will be.
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milsurpwriter 
This could be a very long and intense discussion. Imagine the AirCav soldier in Vietnam in 1972. Every Talking Head in the world was telling him that the war was lost. So why did he go?
I spent my time in nuclear deterrence. We “won” the Cold War, but now things are worse than ever and far more dangerous. Was it worth it? Would I do it again?
Like you, I look at my sone and wonder what the future will hold. Did I do enough so that if there must be conflict, it would be in my time so that his might be in peace?
I do know this: none of those thoughts even crossed my mind when I was 25 with my fingers on the buttons. With age comes introspection, questioning, and critique.
If I knew then what I know now would anything have changed? Intellectually I believe that it would not have changed at all. But maybe that’s the reason that serving is a young person’s game…
Keep Writing!
-DB
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Hiya, Dave…
You provided inspiration for a future post – what the lessons of the Second World War have been highlighted or downplayed in both Japan and Germany… especially in the final days of their respective nations’ might. We always hear the same stories about the same leaders in the same battles, but rarely do we hear what happened next.
Serving is a young person’s game – us old folks would either go all in or get the other side to bring Scotch and coffee. 🙂
Thanks for reading/following… I need to catch up on your show – haven’t been making a lot of road trips by myself, lately 🙂
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