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Deserter/prisoner of war

 Afghanistan.  The wandering soldier returns.  When I heard of this, a soldier wandering off outside his post and getting captured and held for five years, my first thought was “That could have been me.”  Immediately comes to mind an incident in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.  I was nineteen.  Our platoon was on the perimeter, two men to a foxhole, one man awake at all times.  That became our life for a week.  The week went by, mostly without incident.  Somewhere along the way, in the middle of the day, I decided I needed something from over there; somewhere outside our perimeter.  I don’t remember what attracted me; maybe I was looking at carnivorous plants or harvesting bananas.  Maybe I just wondered where a trail led.  Anyway, some time later, I realized that I had walked quite a ways and was sitting on a ridge enchanted by a magnificent jungle view, well away from where I was supposed to be.  I had wandered off without any supplies or weapons, and without anyone even knowing I was gone.  This was not good.  How did I get that far afield without even thinking about it?  A momentary lapse; that turned into a very long moment.  I headed right back to camp. On the way, I realized that my next problem was that I needed to cross back through our perimeter without alarming anyone and getting myself shot.  My sense of direction got me back to where I needed to be, generally, but not exactly to the spot I left from.  I couldn’t tell quite where the perimeter was… until I set off the trip flare.  Happily, I didn’t set off something destructive like a claymore mine; it was just a trip flare that makes a very loud POP and lights up everything around it (if it happens to be dark out).  Given that this was the middle of the day, the loud POP just alerted everyone with rifles pointed my direction.  “No Problem!”  “It’s just me!  “It’s Taylor!” No shots were fired.  I got back in safely.  That could have been me in the news.  “He just walked away from his post.”  “He never said anything to anybody.”  Luckily I didn’t make the news or end up an inadvertent statistic.  
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Is there a lesson here?

 We went into Iraq to fix things.  We got rid of a dictator.  We installed democracy.  First we did the fighting; then we trained their troops to do the fighting.  We equipped them.  We helped them set up a government.  We did the best we could.  And after all the blood sweat and tears; years, equipment, money, and lives, we leave and what happens?  Chaos.  It’s coming apart. Now back at home we attack each other over what we did wrong; who is to blame.  Did we stay there too long?  Did we not stay long enough?  What else could we have done?  What should we do now?  Do we re-insert ourselves?  If we don’t do anything are we disrespecting every life already lost in our efforts?  Are we in so deep we can’t afford to quit? Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned.  Could it just be that the United States doesn’t get to decide everything?  Maybe some things are just going to happen, no matter how much we want them to be different.  Maybe we can’t make other people be like us, no matter how hard we try.