Reflections of war then and now

Where am I? Flash back. Not sure why. Vietnam. Tet, 1968. : Full of ambition and righteousness. My time to prove them wrong. Who? My brother; The protesters; My family; The world. Can I make a difference? I will be between the war and the other thing. Never named; this other thing. I will be with a group to win the "hearts and minds" of the the people. Sound familiar? Afghanistan 2010, Kandahar; my brother soldiers in arms; faced with the same unattainable task. No more, no less. All of their marble tombstones should say " Killed while winning the hearts and minds of the (fill in the blank) people". Why can't we learn from our mistakes?

Selfishness: I was gone for a year, as were you; I gave the most important year of my sons' life for this as you did. A year never recaptured. A void in our relationship that exists to this day. I can't speak further of this. You who have served know what I feel. What I missed. What my son missed. What you missed. What your child missed. What I came back to. What you came back to. There is no remedy for this; no restitution for this..ever. It is what we gave and never expected repayment for. Our loss and our children's loss is what makes us special, very special.

Our task, our job... all of us knowing that it may not work or will not work; me in Vietnam, and you my enthusiastic young soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, like me, showing the world daily through CNN and FOX that we can make a difference. Not aware that a thousand years of culture and religion is bigger than a splash in the pan that we represent.

We Americans think in terms of 1492, 1776, etc. Whereby our enemies of today and yesterday think in much different time frames. One hundred years is not a time frame for Islamic people. One hundred years is just that. There is no timetable for them. Their time and purpose is ubiquitous, Whereas we Americans grow weary of anything that takes longer than it takes to cook a hamburger. That is our weakness! Why can't we see that? History for the United States is a short war for independence; 1774 through 1775. The Mexican American war of 1845 -1846. A horrendous civil war from 1861 -1865 followed by short wars for years and years, even through WWII, the Korean war, and Vietnam. Definitive even if in loss, our wars have been short. We have no stomach for the long haul. No interest if it takes longer than a slow news day. That is our weakness.