Trump levels sanctions on Turkey in attempt to contain the chaos wrecked by his Syria withdrawal

You bring up a lot of good points. We really can't keep this up forever. I'm not in favor of stepping in every time there is unrest, I just think we made a commitment to the Kurds (intentionally or not) when we stepped into the mess in Syria. I've been against everything but a targeted strike in Afghanistan back in the early 2000's. I'd love to see us get out, but given the economics of oil, I doubt we'll ever do that.

 

We did make a commitment to the Kurds and that is the part that makes me personally uncomfortable about this whole thing. Out of all of the factions over there the Kurds are by far the most capable and respectable. Everything I say is based solely on personal experience, but the Afghan Army is hilariously incompetent to the point of me almost believing they deserve to get whooped on by the Taliban. The Afghan police force as well, both are terrible undisciplined structures and having fought and trained alongside them it is very easy to see how the Taliban is able to run amok the second Americans leave an area. I remember one particular time doing a joint clearing operation with them about to assault a building and the Afghan's refusing to go in unless we went first. Our Platoon Sergeant lost his mind and screamed at the top of his lungs to his Afghan counterpart. "This is YOUR COUNTRY, we are here to help YOU, YOUR MEN will be first in the fire!" That is the sort of nonsense I dealt with on a daily basis, they often refused to fight claiming that we Americans were better equipped than them and they DEMANDED better gear before "agreeing" to help us fight for THEIR country.

Long story short, they went in first, and what happened next was probably the single most horrifying thing I have ever seen in my life that still haunts my dreams to this day. It was supposed to be me, but it wasn't, and not to sound cruel but it shouldn't have been me, it should have been them when that bomb went off. That was their country, if Soldiers have to die for it, it should be their Soldiers, not ours. I say that for obviously selfish reasons seeing how I'm glad I'm sitting here right now and not scattered all over the pavement like I was originally supposed to be, but that's the way it SHOULD be. Thousands of American and Allied men and women have been wounded and killed fighting these never ending wars...

The Iraqi Army, same deal. I rarely ever actually get emotional about things in real life, especially world events. But I was personally both livid and heartbroken as I sat on my couch and watched Iraq get conquered by ISIS as I said before. Watching Iraqi troops literally abandon the bases we gave them, abandon the equipment we gave them, and RUN when they even saw ISIS on the horizon. Then I watch ISIS battle flags on top of American built Abrams tanks. I was livid. Whether we should have taken out Sadden in the first place or not doesn't matter to me. What matters is that thousands of Americans died fighting that war. Then I watch as the entire country is overrun a mere couple years later. They died for NOTHING. When I went back to that country to fight again there was a strong resentment towards the Iraqi forces by A LOT of us. Not all of them are cowards, but after watching what happened after we left the first time there were few other words we could think of to describe those forces when we returned.

The Kurds are different, they always have been. The Kurds are not cowards. The Kurds fight for themselves, they don't argue about going into the fire first. They are grateful for our help and go out of their way to show it every chance they got. Doing little seemingly menial things like going out in the town and bringing us back local food on a routine basis. Always friendly, and even regular no name Kurdish fighters would be walking around saying thank you to the Allied troops. It was a completely different atmosphere working alongside the Kurds. The only group of fighters that, in my personal opinion, deserves our help is them.

The problem is they are small and not well equipped and they just can't fight off their enemies even though they will all bravely fight to the death to try. They will ALWAYS need our help to protect them they simply are not strong enough to fight off ISIS, or Turkey, or Syria. But that is where it gets murky because at SOME POINT we do have to make a choice. America can't just live there nor can we stay there for the rest of our existence. Outside of a massive regional change in the likes of establishing a recognized Kurdish state and equipping them with Israel level fortification they will get killed by outside forces. But doing that is just not feasible. So what exactly do we do? There is no good answer only multiple terrible ones. The President made a choice, and while I am personally torn up inside about it I do understand why he's doing this.

The Kurds are the most respectable foreign fighters that I have ever met in my life by a long shot and if anybody deserves American help it's them. But at what cost? And these are the extremely hard choices that make me glad I am not a Commander, let alone a Commander in Chief. Because at the end of the day when the emotion and the politics and bias is all said and done, the question is pretty cut and dry. The Kurds are our best ally in the region and deserve our help, we have been helping them for decades. Are you, Commander, willing to send me to die to continue helping them after so long?

Not send in "ground troops", not send in the "Army", me. I am the "Army", I almost died 5 times fighting these wars for you (hell I should be dead honestly...), many others were not as lucky as I was. We are your "Soldiers" and we have been fighting and dying for 18 years. Are you willing to send me back again?

It's not as easy of a choice as so many make it out to be. 1 death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. Nearly 7,000 Americans have died fighting this War on Terror. That's just a statistic to many people, for me it's not. I know people who comprise that number, good friends of mine. And I watched with my own eyes on a number of occasions in sheer horror as fellow troops added to that body count. So when I hear so often statements like "We need to help the Kurds" or "we need to stay there until the job is done".

I am the "we". This isn't a football game. "Our defense sucks this year" "We can't score more than 7 points per game". Yeah I know people talk like that all the time in regards to sports teams and whatnot. But this isn't a game, this is war.

 

I appreciate your kind words.

At the end of the day all I really want is for people to take into consideration the human factor in all of this. I completely understand the thought process of many people. Before I decided on this career path many years ago I too used to watch the news and think in more general terms such as "Army" or "troops". I've always been a military buff and while watching documentaries I'd see troops on TV and simply think of them as "troops". Even terrible scenarios like watching a documentary on D-Day and hearing the number of causalities it never really hit "home" per say. Although I felt it tragic to me there was a huge disconnect, "2,500 dead Allied troops" that day. But they were just "troops", there were no faces to the names although they of course all had names and faces.

After doing this for so long and seeing and experiencing this in real life I obviously see things is a much different light. They are not just "troops". WE are not just "troops". We are people too, there are faces to the names and we have lives and families and children and we bleed and we die and we are not just statistics on the news or internet. When you Google "War on Terror deaths" it'll just pop up a number. 7000, which doesn't mean that much to many people. Well let me rephrase, it does mean something to people, the sheer amount of support and gratitude that I personally receive from civilians when I so much as stop by the store on my way home from work to pick up a few things in uniform is heartwarming. Even to this day 18 years later I stand in line at Lowe's to pick up an order and 4 people walked by to shake my hand and a woman gave me a hug, in the span of about 5 minutes. It's genuinely heartwarming that so many people care and appreciate the military even when they don't see us on the news fighting as often as they did in years past.

But saying that, not speaking ill of anyone, many folks still subconsciously view the military as "the military". And entity, a collective, not as individuals. When folks hear things like "Send a Brigade Combat Team" it sounds like a "thing", not a unit comprised of thousands of individual Americans who are kissing their loved ones goodbye to go off to fight a war, again. When we visit places like Arlington we see thousands of white crosses, the amount that we see subconsciously degrades the meaning. It's a human emotional aspect. Large numbers become statistics, smaller numbers are tragedies. But I know some of the people buried there beneath a few of the thousands of white crosses. Individual American Soldiers....one of them a teenager...

Point is, we as a society have to think about this and think about what we are asking. I don't use the term "me" to try to garner sympathy or anything like that. I use the term "me" to hopefully get folks thinking about the individual human factor in these decisions. I am a person too, I have a life, I just ate breakfast and had my coffee. I had a family before, they couldn't handle the stress of the profession I chose so a few years ago they got on an airplane and I never saw them again. And 3 months later I too got on an airplane again, and my destination was not to where my family went, it was to Iraq to fight a war. I have sacrificed quite a bit, I have permanent medical conditions that I will have for the rest of my life, I have been left alone by my previous family, and I have spent years of my life in the desert and mountains fighting wars on behalf of the United States of America. I have friends who are dead and I have friends who are disabled. My dress blues are beautiful, they shine with rows of medals and combat stripes. But what they don't show are the scars that I carry both physically and mentally and the prices I paid and the sacrifices I made to make that uniform gleam.

And I am not unique in that regard. I am the common Soldier. I am the "Army". And even with all that I have given, I am still here ready and willing to give even more. I don't want sympathy, I don't want praise, I have no regrets, I would do it all over again if I had to. But I ask society as a whole, I am here at your command, I am your "Soldiers", and if you say go then I will go. How much more are you asking me to sacrifice? How much longer are you asking me to keep fighting?