Fallujah, cont. . . .


The perspective of guys who were there, from the NY Times:

For many veterans of that battle — most now working in jobs long removed from combat — watching insurgents running roughshod through the streets they once fought to secure, often in brutal close-quarters combat, has shaken their faith in what their mission achieved. . . .
“This is just the beginning of the reckoning and accounting,” said Kael Weston, a former State Department political adviser who worked with the Marines for nearly three years in Falluja and the surrounding Anbar Province, and later with Marines in Afghanistan. . . .
“The news went viral in the worst way,” he said. “This has been a gut punch to the morale of the Marine Corps and painful for a lot of families who are saying, ‘I thought my son died for a reason.’ ”

Story.

In terms of history, I find the parallel to Khe Sanh, like all parallels to Vietnam, more than a little strained, but I think it's an accurate portrayal of what these guys feel.