Another War-Torn Generation

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It's not hard these days to imagine how my parents might have felt when they were young and their generational counterparts were being sent off to fight in Vietnam. Different time, different generation, different war, different president, same attitude: get some.
 
"Get some" is a mantra the Marines use--a sort of battle cry that resonates with the deepest part of human beings, whether we dare to admit it or not. It means if you don't get them, they will get you. And these days it seems like it's become the motto of an entire generation of Americans who have grown up with the threat of terrorists at our front door.
 
I started thinking about this last week during a miserable layover at Washington's Dulles Airport after a nice holiday visit with my family. It seemed that every third person at the airport was wearing a military uniform and brand-new combat boots. As I waited for my delayed flight back to New York, I started counting. Ten, twenty, thirty (mostly men) in uniforms... I stopped trying to count after an hour, and instead fixed my attention on those clean, new boots they were all wearing. The soldiers seemed so young and their boots so inappropriate for being sent off to wear while possibly killing or dying. So clean for a job that is so filthy. Watching their faces as they sat in the airport waiting, I wanted desperately to talk with them.
 
"Where are you going---Afghanistan?" "How old are you?" "Are you scared?" I didn't strike up any conversations, but did gravitate toward the empty chairs next to the men in uniform. I hoped that by sitting stoically nearby, they would feel encouraged by the warmth of another human being and a generational counterpart.
 
After all the sad stories of waging war I have heard from my parents' generation, now it's our turn. It's a fact I still cannot believe.
 
But even with the threat of death hanging in the air, at the end of the day it's just a job. Tim Hetherington, an accomplished documentary filmmaker and photographer, has an interesting take on the whole mess. Hetherington spent a year going back and forth to document a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. He's spent a lot of time in the trenches of other countries, too--notably Liberia at the tail end of its recent civil war. In Liberia, he observed that most of the soldiers were just young guys who needed the work for food or survival. And to Hetherington, the American soldiers he saw in Afghanistan weren't all that different from those in Liberia. They were mostly young, restless, maybe a bit underprivileged and needing a back door out of a tough situation, and their common solution was going to war.
 
Looking at it from that perspective gives the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a different sheen. Yes, there's death and suffering in war, but at least for some young Americans, it also seems to offer a life of sorts. Still, it's a short-sell for an entire generation of Americans who have such promise--just as every up and coming generation does. And it makes me wonder if our legacy for our children will be sullied boots returning from wars on foreign shores, dead bodies, and scarred minds, all of which we'll probably learn very little from.
 
(U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Samuel Peterson)
 
If you enjoyed this piece on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, read this post on military strategy in Afghanistan.