Joe Biden has made it clear that America will still drop bombs and assassinate people in Afghanistan, because if we don't bomb and assassinate people then terrorists might bomb and assassinate people-- and bombing and assassinating people is Wrong.
The logic is unassailable.
As we finally wind down the Bush Family Wars, we leave Afghanistan pretty much exactly the same as we found it, Iraq is much much worse, and the entire region is destabilized. One of the first things Barack Obama did was stop releasing the civilian death toll, but the last figure given (roughly 16 years ago) totaled in excess of 1.1 million people.
We spent over two trillion dollars on this.
So it goes.
I don't think soldiers put a great deal of thought into what they're doing. I find it hard to believe American soldiers really believed they were doing anything useful over there. Expanding on that, I don't think Nazi soldiers were mindfully supporting genocide and oppression, or that Confederate soldiers were adamant about apartheid and slavery.
Someone said "Go here and do this," so they went there and did that.
That doesn't strike me as being particularly heroic.
But that's what they did.
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