I understand why some people object to the U.S. leaving Afghanistan and ending its military involvement there. When my older brother Mike was killed in Vietnam on September 22, 1968, I felt the same way. I desperately wanted his death to have meaning, and the war machine had convinced us that the only way for it to have meaning was to destroy the Communists and force the American way of life into every single Vietnamese household.

That year, 1968, was the worst for the U.S. forces. According to the website, https://thevietnamwar.info/vietnam-war-casualties/, 16,899 American service members were killed in the war in 1968, fully 29 percent of the 58,220…