Amazing New York Times Article
Joseph Gerson / The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security

As John Lennon sang, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Let me recommend, as highly as I can, that you and every U.S. high school and college student read a front-page article in today’s New York Times, “Why I Sought Out a Taliban Commander I Had Fought.”

Searingly honest, it goes to the heart of the tragedy and crimes of war, closes with a clear description of why so many U.S. military veterans suffer and even commit suicide, and closes on a note of something close to love. And is certainly a real life echo of The Odyssey (which I saw last night,)

I was able to open the link on the New York Times Breaking News page and hope that you can too. Respect for the author’s and the Times’ copyright keeps me from cutting and pasting the article.

Amazingly honest, wise, and helpful

Go for it. And do what you can,

Why I Sought Out a Taliban Commander I Had Fought
Thomas Gibbons-Neff / New York Times

(July 23, 2026) — I’ve had a hand in killing around six people. Maybe seven. I don’t know if one man bled out on the side of the road or was taken to a doctor. I think about him often.

The killings occurred in the winter and spring of early 2010, during one of the largest operations of the Afghanistan war: the battle of Marja. I was the 22-year-old leader of a scout sniper team of seven Marines and one Navy corpsman.

It is a strange thing, having killed people in a conflict that spanned 20 years and was ultimately lost. The sum of such an intense expenditure of human lives and trauma left Afghanistan much as it was in 2001, before any American boots touched the ground.

Killing in war often boils down to an us-or-them mentality, a defensible position common to infantry combat. But we were also directed to “win hearts and minds,” the U.S. strategy meant to earn the population’s trust and isolate the Taliban. Trying to build good will while engaging in gunfights beside people’s homes was profoundly confusing. The killing wasn’t detached; it felt deeply personal.

Patrols required a constant assessment of friend or foe, and long hours staring through high-powered optics trying to determine the intent and mannerisms of our enemies. Rarely did we see them with a rifle in their hands. Killing fell on our own instincts and an ever-replenishing set of fears. Should we shoot this man? Should we not? What if we don’t? Will our friends die because of our hesitation?

…

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a former New York Times reporter who covered the wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine. He traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan, in May.
Read the entire essay on the NYT website.