Pretty much exactly summed up:
“If things look grim in Afghanistan, they hardly look better in Iraq. And it’s terrible to think that this is the meaning of all those years of war, all that death and heartbreak. It’s even more terrible to wonder if that was the only meaning they ever could have had, though history will take longer to write that one. In a couple of years, probably faster, we’ll have vanished from places like Panjwai, as we’re gone today from Haditha and Mahmudiyah. And since we’re Americans, we’ll have soon moved on from the decade in Afghanistan just as we’re well on our way to forgetting about the nine years in Iraq—except for the Americans who fought, who have a harder time forgetting.”