With shock comes awe. When I read about the courage that OIF veterans are showing, it feels me with an awe a hundred times more powerful than that I felt in March 2003. Like Andrew Kinard, who lost his legs and went on to compete in the Boston Marathon. Or Brendan Marrocco, the only quadruple amputee veteran of either OIF or OEF, who lives a life of valor every day. Or Ryan Kules, a double amputee who celebrates his "Alive Day" on the anniversary of the attack in Iraq that almost took his life. Or the countless Iraq War veterans who live daily with the emotional and mental scars of the war. Their resilience and strength are awe-inspiring, indeed.
It was a foolish, reckless, misconceived and ill-executed endeavor. In its start and in its finish, in its shock and in its awe, it reminds of what John Adams wrote: "Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war." The actual cost to country and families, however, is much greater.
Who really paid the price:
I'd guarantee if you looked at their socio-economic they would mostly come from the poor and the left behind but I wouldn't say that because that would be class warfare. Pointing something out is class warfare, actually doing it isn't.
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