The fall of Saigon happened before I was born so I have no direct memories of the debacle that was the Vietnam War and its ignominious end, only the images, interviews, and the excellent documentary from Ken Burns to imagine what it must have been like to have lived it firsthand. The primary purpose there was to stop Ho Chi Minh and the "Communist threat," which we spectacularly failed to do.

 When we went into Afghanistan it was with a different primary purpose: find Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice for 9/11, whatever that entailed. I was in support of that mission then and remained so until Bin Laden was eventually killed in Pakistan in 2011.

I was deeply uneasy, however, about our approach to Afghanistan as a country, mostly because of what I learned from our disastrous intervention in Vietnam. Somehow, we would have to deal with the Taliban in a substantive way and find a way to integrate them into the government or it would be an exercise in futility, imposing a puppet democracy over what is ultimately a religious oligarchy and has been for decades. Our involvement in others' civil wars has proven time and again that American ideals do not work as a one size fits all solution, but our insistence that "we must be right and we know what's best for these civilizations" makes that an untenable thought for many Americans, and we hurl money and men at the country as if by sheer numbers we can turn the ideological tide.

I won't say I told you so because I couldn't say anything to anyone who would have any actual impact on US's choice to invade, nor could I see the future, just make some educated guesses. Even then I cannot truly understand the region and its warring sects, the full history of Afghanistan, or all of the geopolitical forces that push and pull across the Middle East. I am no diplomat, and would be woefully unqualified and under-prepared to contribute anything of significance to the discussion, so just watched with a sense of dread as we started to search for democracy where there was none.

As a country, yes, we couldn't have let 9/11 go unanswered; that was a direct attack of the most brutal nature and a clear declaration of war, regardless of who had carried it out. But going to war with a national power like Germany or Japan in WWII is a far cry from trying to declare war on a religion or extremist group with no centralized base. The idea of the War on Terror was sound, but the implementation needed to focus on Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, not Afghanistan or Iraq. Once we overthrew their governments instead of operating in the gray areas of negotiating to let the CIA handle Bin Laden, we were in all likelihood doomed to see another precipitous evacuation ahead of total defeat. It would have happened if the president was Republican or Democrat. It would be the one who was willing to say "Enough. We are done."

So here we are again, watching our allies desperately run for aircraft and the Taliban taking over. In Iraq there will probably be similar scenes when we finally decide to cut our losses and watch chaos engulf that country as well. We met our primary goal, but lost any other gains we had made in and for Afghanistan itself as we expanded our aims.

The next generation will do the same for Afghanistan and Iraq as I did with Vietnam, watch the footage, read the news reports and analysis from experts in the field, and hopefully absorb and apply the lesson: when it comes to deposing governments in countries halfway around the world, don't do it. Focus on the true enemy and find a subtler way to address the threat. Choose an appropriate primary endpoint, accomplish it, then withdraw and don't take ownership of the country's future moves. It rarely ends well otherwise.

Over the past decade I feel like I've covered a lifetime's worth of experiences from the most exhilarating successes to crushing failures that placed me on the edge of death. Despite all of it, the biggest takeaway I found is that I am resilient. I can be knocked down over and over, and there are times when I break as I fall, but I've always been able to pick up the pieces, fit them back together, and get on with life as it is in that moment. It's never the way I want it to be, nor the way I'm told by society it should be, but the misshapen parts that remain somehow fit back into a new whole.

Is it wrong to want to take a break from that? To finally cede some of that control and loneliness, let go of dreams and aspirations, and just accept the bare minimum from life? I think that's why it's so difficult for me to pretend I'm 22 again and drive myself to distraction working every possible angle to find another position that could restart my career here in NJ; I've already been there, done that in NYC and the results weren't worth it. 

It's natural to be more risk-averse as you age, and since I've ended up in such dark places in the past from giving literally everything at the altar of capitalism I'm incredibly afraid to chance it all over again. At some point resilience wanes and every time you fall apart it takes longer to recover, so the risk becomes more than the reward. I'll continue looking online at job boards. I'll still do any interviews that come my way and give it my best shot. But for now, I think that's all the effort I can afford to give.

 The rent moratorium finally expired, just as the Delta variant is climbing and businesses are fearing another shutdown, plunging people back into unemployment (if they ever got out in the meantime) just when the UI benefits are due to expire for many. What remains for those who have nowhere else to live, and no viable employment options? The sad fact is that in this country, no one with the money or power to help these people give a damn. They would let them starve on the street, and only intervene with police if the homeless directly threatened their neighborhoods.

Humans are a often a heartless species, from the English royalty exploiting serfs to the caste system in India to the periodic genocides for religion or other differences, and I expect that once again there will be tragic consequences. Politicians will wring their hands, the wealthy will jet off to another country to escape the repercussions of having to live where the poors are impacting their way of life, and many of those falling through the wide slashes in our tattered social safety net will die from deaths of despair and untreated medical conditions.

We as a society should be better than this, but America has proven time and again that we cannot muster the empathy for our fellow humans as a whole to make sure people have their most basic needs tended to. I'm lucky that I have paid my landlord in full when I moved out, have my parents to fall back on and live with, and that I can (sort of) afford health insurance through the exchange, but I ache for those who have none of those things.  

And to be honest, if some sort of appropriate backlash begins as evictions ramp up, the best course would probably be for the tenants and small landlords to actually band together against the system that created this crisis and demand change. Demand higher wages for people who do go back to work, and universal basic income better than SSDI for those who can't work, so that tenants can afford rent. Demand functioning government that should have disbursed the funds for rent relief that landlords should have been paid during the moratorium. Demand that the predatory practices of the large landlords, in cahoots with private equity and too-big-to-fail banks, stop illegal practices and act in the tenant and individual property's best interests. 

We all need to demand more, because it sure as hell isn't given to us, and never will be if we don't act in the best interests of society as a whole.