The long way home

Well, my friends, its been six months since I set out on this little journey of mine. I arrived in Kabul with no understanding of Afghanistan, but in love with the placel almost from the start. I think that my knowledge of this place has probably grown immensely, even though I still feel a great sense of ignorance. How can you come to know a country, anyways? Certainly, you must live there. We don't really live in Afghanistan, as I have said before we live on it. Our contact with the population at large is limited and infrequent. Our response to the dangers-real or imagined-of this place keep us seperated from most Afghans. Our lack of respect for some aspects of the culture (treatment of women, sharia law) widens the gap. I think that this frustrating sense of supericial involvement in this country might be true in any case, although it is certainly exacerbated by my position here. While I'm on the subject, there is a fundamental question which comes out of this odyssey of mine. Have I done the right thing here? This question cannot be answered by me with any amount of emotional clarity. It hinges on the unknown (unknowable?)answers to a host of other questions. When I think about some of the things which I have done here I feel a visceral sense of accomplishment, but self-interested achievement might not justify my position. I have a collection of photographs from this place, most of which I wouldn't comfortably share with my family due to the preponderance of automatic weapons and body armor. Yet, there are people here who want to kill us, which is an excellent reason to prepare to do the same thing if necessary. Who is correct here? Do we, the Americans of this occupation force, have the moral highground in this campaign? Or are we the hedonistic pawns of capitalist neo-imperialism that some would label us? Of course I am neither, and both. I am the young man who feels a sense of justice in the overthrow of the Taliban and the upcoming inaugeration of Afghanistan's first (mostly) democratically elected president. I am also a "hired gun" if you will, with the minor distinction that I am being paid for my ability to communicate, not my ability to kill people. I guess the question is, 'By what scale are these actions measured?' or more plainly, 'What perspective is the correct one?' The academic in me insists that there is a correct perspective somwhere, the soldier in me thinks the academic needs to step outside his Ivory Tower and see what it looks like on the ground. There is no satisfactory answer. I think I knew that when I signed up for this.