The act of killing in combat is associated with heightened risks of PTSD and suicide. A scholar who interviewed 30 veterans about their common experiences.
If you killed and achieved nothing good, you're just any other murderer. The people who killed over there caused and justified future attacks in the west, on top of giving them tens of thousands of high-end guns to do it with. Two decades of training in bomb-making, endless footage of Americans being hungry hogs in response to the suffering of the entire Afghan people including those who believed in the US project. Like any Vietnam, Korea, or Latin America vet what legacy can you say you've earned except rightful shame? Social damnation after wasting so much money at the expense of the people at home to murder hundreds of thousands of people you don't know for corporate profits? Losing to people who didn't have satellites or the wOrLd'S mOsT pOwErFuL MiLiTaRy? If you did any of that here you'd get an answer to "Did I kill?" in the form of the death penalty. True crime youtubers would study you like a bug.
If you killed and achieved nothing good, you're just any other murderer. The people who killed over there caused and justified future attacks in the west, on top of giving them tens of thousands of high-end guns to do it with. Two decades of training in bomb-making, endless footage of Americans being hungry hogs in response to the suffering of the entire Afghan people including those who believed in the US project. Like any Vietnam, Korea, or Latin America vet what legacy can you say you've earned except rightful shame? Social damnation after wasting so much money at the expense of the people at home to murder hundreds of thousands of people you don't know for corporate profits? Losing to people who didn't have satellites or the wOrLd'S mOsT pOwErFuL MiLiTaRy? If you did any of that here you'd get an answer to "Did I kill?" in the form of the death penalty. True crime youtubers would study you like a bug.