{"id":1609024,"date":"2022-08-16T14:47:24","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T18:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1609024"},"modified":"2022-08-16T14:47:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T18:47:34","slug":"was-it-worth-it-reflections-from-a-disposable-hero-of-the-war-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/was-it-worth-it-reflections-from-a-disposable-hero-of-the-war-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Was It Worth It? Reflections From A \u2018Disposable Hero\u2019 Of The War In Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwas-it-worth-it-reflections-from-a-disposable-hero-of-the-war-in-afghanistan%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1609024&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The call came early in the morning, not long after I had spent the entire night wandering the hallways of my home. No pleasantries were exchanged, just the gruff voice of the sergeant I knew from my time overseas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI assume you\u2019ve seen the news?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I nodded, realized he couldn\u2019t see me, and then answered with a belated, \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat a mess,\u201d he stated. \u201cWhat a damned mess.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The man on the other line was Paul \u201cGonzo\u201d Gonzalez, the team sergeant who ensured I came home alive from Afghanistan. Despite having a Hispanic last name, Paul was an Irish American with pasty white skin and dark brown hair. What made him most intimidating was the way his jaw muscles flexed when he was irritated. I imagined \u2014 at that moment \u2014 his jaw was clenched so tight his teeth might break, given the current news cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Gonzo was there with me on a fateful day in Afghanistan. He found me standing on a makeshift helicopter tarmac covered in blood and clutching another soldier\u2019s rifle to my chest. Holes torn through my shirt and hands drenched in viscera, he rotated my head from side to side until I swatted his arm. \u201cI just got my bell rung,\u201d I told him. This made Gonzo raise an eyebrow, given that my responses were slow, I was swaying from side to side, and I looked like hell. \u201cOkay, I went headfirst into a wall. Seriously. I\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Taliban had hit our small forward operating base, and I took the brunt of a 107mm rocket, as did another soldier. The other man had to be medically evacuated due to the gravity of his injuries, and I helped patch him up as best I could. Then we hoisted him on a litter and ran to the helicopter. I don\u2019t remember portions as I was slipping in and out of lucidity, unaware that I was even injured. We both survived, but now, some 18 years after the event, my past was coming back to haunt me.<\/p>\n<p>Gonzo waited on the other end of the line until I said something. \u201cFirst Ramadi, and now this? It\u2019s embarrassing,\u201d I spat.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Gonzo and I also fought together in Ramadi, Iraq, from 2006 to 2007. In 2015, we watched helplessly as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took over the city. Now a repeat scenario was happening in our other war. We watched with horror as the Afghan government collapsed overnight and the Taliban seized control of the capitol. Iraq hurt, but Afghanistan delivered the killing blow to the morale of most veterans.<\/p>\n<p>Neither Gonzo nor I could put into words the anger, frustration, or fruitlessness we felt. Instead, we were two combat veterans lamenting events unfolding in Kabul. Little did we know just how bad it would get, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/blog\/fixgov\/2021\/11\/12\/anger-betrayal-and-humiliation-how-veterans-feel-about-the-withdrawal-from-afghanistan\/\">how hard it would hit<\/a> so many other veterans.<\/p>\n<p>A year removed from the withdrawal in Afghanistan, a question I\u2019m often asked is, \u201cWas it worth it?\u201d When people ask, my mind goes to names like Seitsinger, Mancini, O\u2019Neil, Thomas, Fuller, and Meister \u2014 men who died in Afghanistan that I had served alongside.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an old Metallica song from the critically acclaimed album, \u201cMaster of Puppets,\u201d entitled \u201cDisposable Heroes\u201d that I sometimes listen to. The song details young men being fed to the military industrial complex only to die in battle. The album has once more become popular after the most recent season of \u201cStranger Things\u201d in which social outcast Eddie Munson shreds to the title track. But much of the album is about how war \u2014 and drugs \u2014 manipulate you.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose that looking back now, I feel like the U.S. government was the \u201cMaster of Puppets,\u201d manipulating those of us who fought in the war, only to watch it explode in our face. In fact, we got sold an ever changing narrative throughout four different presidencies.<\/p>\n<p>During my time in Afghanistan, a focal point became the poppy fields and drug trade through the Silk Road. That ended disastrously, so the narrative changed. Minerals and commodities, stabilization efforts, democracy, rooting out terrorism, or anything to slap lipstick on the pig of war was used as a tool to rewrite or change the focus. The story about what we were doing in Afghanistan and why became so convoluted that the American populace checked out and sort of forgot we were still there. That was, until 13 service members died in an explosion at Abbey Gate during the evacuation process in August 2021. Suddenly everyone gave a damn about our dead service members because the media\u2019s Eye of Sauron turned its gaze once more to Afghanistan. But all those names I just rattled off? No one set out beers in their memory at local taverns. They were just\u2026 disposable heroes.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose that\u2019s why many veterans are salty about the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The call came early in the morning, not long after I had spent the entire night wandering the hallways of my home. No pleasantries were exchanged, just the gruff voice of the sergeant I knew from my time overseas. \u201cI assume you\u2019ve seen the news?\u201d I nodded, realized he couldn\u2019t see me, and then answered &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1609119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1609119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}