I didn’t join the military for God or country; I doubt most soldiers ever do. Working fifty hours a week while trying to finish college was heavy, and by age twenty, I was already married, so I joined to provide for my wife and the family we looked forward to raising. I knew I was continuing a legacy of service for my country that traced back in my family to the Revolutionary War and continued through the Civil War, both world wars, and Vietnam. I thought I was under no patriotic illusions when I decided to enlist, but my upbringing had been steeped in far more patriotism and uncritical belief in American exceptionalism than I could have known. The things that had prepared me for basic training – school, church, politics, TV, talk radio – had already been molding me from an early age. They would eventually position me in a tower in Iraq, where, while my own months-old son slept in the safety of his crib at home, I would revel as tracer rounds stitched the night sky above the homes of Iraqi families.

An American veteran comes to terms with the consequences of a war he believed was righteous.