Thomas Gibbons-Neff: With Boston bombs, the war comes home [View all]

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/thomas-gibbons-neff-with-boston-bombs-the-war-comes-home/article_c7000a38-bc48-5d1f-bab3-a22958877708.html

Thomas Gibbons-Neff: With Boston bombs, the war comes home
April 27, 2013 4:40 am
THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told investigators that he and his brother set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in part because of their opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine who fought in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, I wondered: Had my war brought the horrors of battle home?

~snip~

I deployed to Afghanistan believing my presence in that country would help stop attacks such as Boston's from happening. But instead, my war had spilled over, striking the city where my 22-year-old brother goes to school and where my mom, until recently, felt perfectly safe eating lunch outdoors.

The Tsarnaev brothers aren't the first terrorists to cite U.S. military intervention in other countries as a reason for targeting civilians, and they won't be the last. Despite our best efforts and valor, I wonder, have America's wars made the homeland less safe? Sure, we've killed and captured thousands of radicals who wanted to harm Americans. But in doing so, have we created more?

It wasn't always easy to justify serving in a war that has devolved from its initial aim of ousting the Taliban and al-Qaida to a nation-building effort that appeared to have come 10 years too late. The conflict has dragged on for more than a decade, becoming increasingly unpopular after years of mixed results and no clear definition of victory. The counterinsurgency mantra of "clear-hold-build" echoed in our ears as we fought an elusive enemy and slowly pushed them out of the city centers. Day by day, we measured victory by the number of wells we had helped build and the time that had passed without a casualty.