I saw a lot of Afghan War vets in Russia. Probably more than i realized, actually, but one sticks in my memory. I saw him regularly at an underpass on Nevsky Prospect. He wore his BDU’s and a blue, Spetsnaz beret sat in his lap. He couldn’t do much, the arms and legs of his BDU’s were pinned up to the stumps where his limbs used to be. He’d sit there all day, and in all the times i saw him, i never saw him speak. He never even showed any expression, just the thousand yard stare. Sometimes i’d see a woman come to wheel him away in the evening.

And you know, when 9/11 happened and the war drums sounded for the march into Afghanistan, mostly what i thought about was that veteran. I still think about him…i don’t know why, but he’s one of those images frozen into my mind that presents itself, sometimes unprovoked. Our streets may never be littered with so many obviously broken men, but the situation is one of degrees only. We’re breaking them.

Years from now the veterans of our Afghan War will probably gather like the Russian veterans do now, to mark something that they couldn’t change but that changed them forever…something that their fellow citizens will do their best to forget or ignore.