Had anyone told me while I was dodging IEDs in 2007 that I'd be writing about the final withdrawal at age 48, I would have rightly questioned the entire project  - Dan Grazier, responsiblestatescraft.org

I do know that my Marines and I survived some close calls. I also know that nearly 5,000 Americans did not survive their Iraq deployments since the 2003 invasion, along with several hundred thousand other casualties between US contractors, our allies, and the Iraqi people.

A question I wrestle with today is if I had been killed in Iraq, what purpose would my death have served? I don’t have a good answer for that question and the mere fact that the last Americans are coming home from Iraq 19 years later leads me to believe I never will. My grandfather fought in Europe during World War II. He could say that he had helped defeat totalitarianism because his war ended when he was still young. I watched people continuing to deploy to mine after I entered middle age.

At this point, I don’t really want an answer to my question. But I would like to see all that was lost in Iraq: the people who were killed, the broken lives of those who came home, the resources, and even a bit of our collective innocence transform from the waste it is today into a sacrifice. People and societies make sacrifices by relinquishing something of value for some useful purpose. The best way to turn all that was lost in Iraq into a sacrifice is by learning the right lessons from the experience and then properly apply them moving forward.