My buddy I served with back in the day posted this on his social media account when the news hit about ISIS in Iraq. I really enjoyed it.

“Iraq, a country that friends and coworkers of mine fought for, bleed for, and died for over an eight year period is unraveling in a matter of days. A country where we spent trillions of US dollars on tearing down, and then rebuilding is currently being overrun by extremist and the Iraqis themselves seem to scared to even fight back. Whether you agree with the decisions in 2003 that led us into that hell hole or not, this country asked for the sacrifice of good men and women and they happily gave it. To this day I have friends of mine carrying the scars of that sacrifice. One still often wears a bullet shell around his neck fired during an ambush where a lot of brave Americans died, one still has shrapnel they never fully got out of her arm and her face, many of my friends have PTSD from the memories of what they went through, likely more than I will ever realize , and the list goes on. It seems to me we are just sitting here watching all that sacrifice fade away and mean nothing in the real world. Any amateur could see we left an unfinished democracy behind us that had little chance of lasting, and now we are just standing idly by while Iraq burns. I know many people would rather ignore the last 13 years of war and sacrifice and move on with their lives. We did our best to not bother anyone with it during the war, why should people care now? I will tell you why, because thousands of Americans died for that place because you asked them too, tens of thousands have physical wounds they will deal with for the rest of their lives because you asked them too, tens of thousands more will deal with the emotional and psychological scars because you god damn asked the too. Now we are just going to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil while Iraq descends into chaos and all that blood that was spilled will means nothing. Now the country has decided maybe we didn’t really want that sacrifice. Well too late, you can’t take that back, you can’t un-spill that blood. What you can do is honor the sacrifices that were made and do something to stop what people seem convinced is inevitable. If we dishonor the sacrifice of so many, if we make the same mistakes of Vietnam where we pretend our veterans didn’t do exactly what the country asked them to, what do you think will happen the next time this country ask for the sacrifice of so many? Or the time after that? How many times can we ignore all that people give in order for this country to be free before one time we ask and nobody answers? What in the hell do you think happens then? Then we look like Iraq today, where some enemy we all should have seen coming simply swoops in and suddenly the lives we all tried to build behind our imaginary walls is gone.”