GWOT On My Mind

Fighting Alone

Cold Bewilderment

Having been an imperial grunt for the better part of a decade, I watched last summer’s humiliation in Afghanistan unfold with a lurid fascination. To be more precise, I spent the first several days of our national disgrace angry and seething. As every good soldier knows, animosity drowns out heartbreak—sometimes even guilt. But anger doesn’t last forever. It certainly can’t outlast the Taliban. And so as the days dragged on and the world witnessed a tribal army humiliate the mightiest nation on earth, my indignation slowly dissipated and I was left cold and bewildered.

Of course, for those who gave their pound of flesh to the Afghan War the collapse of this $2 trillion Potemkin village was foreordained. Any private with an ASVAB waiver could have prophesied it. The Afghan Army’s limitations were widely known and Kabul’s corruption was the talk of chow halls from Bagram to Baumholder. The lowliest grunt had good reason to doubt the wisdom of the planners, experts, and managers who quietly steered America’s war machine. The hands learned early on that they couldn’t count on the brains.

But for me this ignoble conclusion was more than a national defeat. It was the unofficial end of a quixotic crusade against terrorism and the last, tragic gasp of America’s traditional warrior caste.

Cold bewilderment.

Benign Neglect

Long after the failed Afghan War has fossilized under years of benign neglect, a body of journalists and scholars will attempt to write the definitive history of the Global War on Terror. Surely they will condemn four US presidents while reserving the mildest rebuke for Barack Obama. There will be some criticism of the generals, managers, planners, and experts who tinkered us to failure—though not enough—but make no mistake, the bowties will reserve their most cruel denunciations for American society. They will attack our chauvinism, naiveté, and lack of “cultural awareness,” while shaming the American people for ignoring wars the world forgot.

If contemporary accounts are any guide, future chroniclers will take a lighter touch with the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen who fought and died over the past two decades—with an important caveat: to escape censure or a worse fate of being deliberately forgotten, the GWOT veteran must bow to those who betrayed him, enlist in the demoralization campaign against the folks back home, or embrace being forever broken and make the most of his five minutes of pity.

Outside detached commentary on the GWOT’s steady trickle of death, the “military-civilian divide,” and mental health, I doubt much ink will be spilled exploring the real toll of these Indian wars on those who fought them and the spirit of the nation. Most of us still live in the 20th century and see the world through the eyes of beancounters and bureaucrats—15,000 dead nobodies on the frontiers of the American imperium hardly seems like much of loss when stacked against two world wars and two costly “police actions.” What’s more, for the average American, conflict and death are best passively consumed when not actively avoided. Most Americans have had their fill of spoiled wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, but the edacious American is always hungry for some new banquet of bloodshed—perhaps a proxy war in Ukraine or maybe even a war against unruly peasants in his own country. Anything that makes him feel righteous without having to ask himself why.

What it Gave

It’s hard to imagine many of my brothers-in-arms taking such accounts seriously. These Indian wars are damn near indiscernible even to us, much less the uninitiated. And no matter how many bowties swarm around it, the longest global conflict in American history will never be understood as we understand it. The GWOT may have been a con of sorts, and as time drags on it’s harder to say the past 20 years were worth $8 trillion and the best blood of a generation. But as much as the GWOT took, it also gave. And I would be lying if I said I regret meeting that heartless mistress.

The years I spent tramping around the world with a rifle were by far the most enriching of my life. Even when I was soaking wet and freezing, or baking under a ruthless foreign sky—when I was tired, starving, sick, scared, and every inch of my body screamed at me all at once—I knew I was living. For men like me, to feel alive for even a moment is worth a hell of a beating. We will sweat for it, bleed for it, and make others bleed—all to feel that we are doing what we were made for. Sure, you do it for your brothers. They make the agony and the absurdity and the cruelty and the futility bearable. Their joy is yours. Their suffering is yours. Their life is your life. You hold it all in the palm of your hand, and you would have it no other way. You are alive together.

Everyone tumbles into this world hardwired for life, but at some point you find yourself condemned to a small desk in a small room under the watchful eye of an underpaid woman eager to usher you into the world of the dead. The journey takes several years, and there is always a little kicking and screaming, but when you do arrive you quickly forget what came before. It’s a strange place—sleepy, slow, and sticky-sweet, where basketweavers and witch-doctors enjoy complete sovereignty and shame lurks behind every interaction. There are no warriors, heroes, or men you can respect in that place. A numb stupefaction settles in.

Few escape the land of the dead, but for many of us the GWOT was a rare ticket out. It was a treacherous road, but we grew strong, and years of quiet frustration finally became intelligible. We lived the full measure of our creation. And thank the Lord for that.

Fighting Alone

America has a warrior caste. It’s collapsing now, along with everything else, but it’s still there. To comprehend what’s left of this caste and where it goes from here, one has to lift a curtain of lies to gaze at the ugly heart of this regime, which is no easy task.

Most of us saw behind the curtain early enough to know that we’d be fighting alone, and that our fight was not the same as granddad’s. For those of us who held the lives of others in our hands, at some point it was no longer about Toby Keith, the adventure, the benefits, or the laurels: it was us against the world—and we'd rather be damned than let a brother take the burden alone.

Does this make us “dupes?” Perhaps. But I think there’s a bit of wisdom here that just might do you some good, dear reader.

We are all in the middle of a war now. This is not the terrain of our choosing, our enemy has superior firepower, and our leaders are feckless, weak, and don't hesitate to betray their own. It's us against the world. At this point loyalty matters more than just about anything. It’s what made so many of us veterans step forward time and again to fight a determined enemy despite knowing we’d be without vision or support from the planners, experts, and managers back home.

There are few choices left, and what remains is dwindling. But if I know anything—if the GWOT has some lesson to impart—it’s that you can’t fight this alone. Loyalty is everything, and it might be all you’ve got.