I'll never open the forbidden door of asking, but my sister's deployment was Afghanistan and earned her a promotion to sergeant. Mom was glued to cable news every free moment. If she could have had a 4-5 way split screen monitoring any mention of younger SFH's base. It was a wretched and emotional nightmare. I know she was "only" public affairs, but there were frequent bomb attacks and one story she DID tell us involved her going off base for a transport and getting yanked out the car by a local, a fellow soldier quickly secured her and non-lethally detained the local.
My brother-in-law has "seen some shit" per my sis but with every soldier I can't ask questions because I'm a civilian.
These near 2 decades of war have exposed people I care about and probably people you all care about to some of the worst atrocities humans can do to one another. Consequences to the perpetrators of 9/11 were definitely needed, but hindsight indicates it isn't the best strategy to lead from impulse and vengeance, and ultimately, most of the radical eastern sects are still pissed at us and would do an 18/22 to us if given the opportunity. In 03, with the the events of that horrible morning relatively still fresh, I did a paper for GOV499, Military Intervention, on the operation in Afghanistan, the hunt for OBL. I found some good stuff, but damn it was dated pretty quickly. Thinking about it, being able to find all of those 300+ page books makes me sick at the cash grab by the publishers.
