Blood and Sand – Footprints of War

There are only two kinds of soldiers in war: The ones doing the dying, and the ones watching them die.?War is hell.?But at least in hell there is the possibility of salvation.?As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.?Unfortunately, the salvation usually comes only after death, and the soldiers on the battlefield are still just as dead.?As is the case in any war, the soldiers go on dying, and others go on watching them die.?And just as many times they know they could be next. The war on terror is terror itself, for those who have to do the fighting.?

Tell that to all the soldiers and veterans who fought in Afghanistan, only to see their sacrifice thrown away by ignorant politicians who don’t have the backbone to finish anything!

And tell that to the Veterans of Vietnam, who are now seeing the same fiasco all over again!

The war on terrorism that America fought in Afghanistan – and still is fighting in a way elsewhere in the world (and no doubt will soon back again in Afghanistan) – has always been a war very far away.?

And that’s always been the trouble.

It was a war far away.

Even though the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, and the Pentagon, and the field of Honor in Pennsylvania, was the single largest attack by any foreign power or combatant upon the very soil of the United States of America, and resulted in the biggest loss of life ever in any such attack – even more so than the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor at the beginning of the second world war – the average American was far removed from this war. And especially so for some politicians, who seemed to care only about being elected, or re-elected.

For most of us, this war had been sanitized by the simple fact that it was being fought far away, and by people we didn’t really know.?

But this is not so for everyone.?

The families of the soldiers who have died, or have been severely injured in combat, and those that are still serving in the armed forces around the world, know this war on terror all too well.?To them this war is immediate, and very much part of their daily lives.?Even more so today, as they see their elected officials toss away all they did, and crap on their patriotic sacrifice!

But for most of us the war on terror did not have a human face, or something to which we could relate.?Something that would clearly show us all that this war on terror was not just being fought with political ad campaigns, or in musty board rooms.?We needed something that would tell us all “Hey Wake Up!?We are dying here!”?

But that was not to be. Yes, there were slogans – and lots of political trumpeting. But little effort to finish what could have been a true victory over terror.

But still the war on terror went on, and it had a price beyond that of the terror itself.?And that price is still being paid today. By the soldiers who are still fighting, by those allies who have now been abandoned, by those Veterans who joined to fight in Afghanistan to rid the world of terrorists, and safeguard the American Homeland - only to see it all now tossed away like so much garbage.

When a military response is called for to defend the nation, it is the men and women of the Armed Forces – the soldiers on the ground – who carry the battle to the battlefield wherever that may be.?Since the war of the American Independence, and the war of 1812, all foreign wars in which American soldiers were involved have always been fought on foreign lands.?This is again so with the war on terrorism.?Unfortunately – this time – the nation had not been galvanized by these heroic battles in a way that it had been in previous major conflicts.?And the Politicians took notice of that - and so they went with the flow, and happily shrouded themselves in ignorance and apathy.

We all seem to have become comfortable in our ignorance, and even more comfortable in our avoidance of reality, and truth.?

Especially so for our politicians.

Did you know that since WW II the United States of America has NOT won ANY war or conflict?

No victory in Korea – 1950-1953

No victory in Vietnam – 1954-1975

No victory in the First Gulf War – 1990-1991

No victory in the Second Gulf War – January 17, 1991 – February 28, 1991

No victory in Syria – still going on

No victory in Iraq – still going on

No victory in Afghanistan – 2001-2021

The effort and the sacrifice of all the soldiers and all persons fighting this war on terror – wherever they may be or whoever they may be – not only puts a human face to a faceless war being fought far away, but in its immensity inspires us to retell a few other well spoken words – from an age long ago:

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

In case you don’t recognize these words, they are the last two sentences from a speech given by President Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg Memorial, November 19, 1863.?

As valuable and as appropriate as they were then, they are equally so today.

Especially for those who fought in Afghanistan – and in all those other American Wars of the 20th and 21st Centuries, which the American Politicians didn’t let them win.