Local view: A reading list for a long war

On Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, I was a full-time student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, fewer than two years removed from service as a U.S. Marine. I'd just begun studying exercise science and was imagining a civilian career as a personal trainer, strength coach or perhaps a physical therapist. It would be a very different life than the one continued military service might have provided. By the time I sat down two days later in John Janovy's introductory biological sciences class in Henzlik Hall, I had decided to return to military service. It was not yet clear what form that return would take. As I remember it, Janovy got right to the point: The previous day's horrific terrorist attacks against the United States would almost certainly draw the country into a long war, and the nation's young people, like those seated in that auditorium, would carry much of the burden. Then he passed around a reading list on war, books that had shaped his understanding of armed conflict. One title above all the others stayed with me: Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam." I purchased a paperback and read it in spare moments over several months. My main impression was the gap between Washington's portrayal of the war and the reality faced by those fighting it. I had no way of knowing what wartime service might demand from me. During my last semester before graduation in 2004, I learned that Edward Iwan, a friend from a communications skills class, was killed in action serving as a U.S. Army officer in Fallujah, Iraq. Ed was the first person I knew personally to die during the post-9/11 wars. I still visit his grave outside Albion when I am in Nebraska. Just over a year after I was commissioned as a Marine officer, I would also serve in Fallujah. The attacks profoundly changed the path I was on. I eventually returned to the Marines. The next two decades in uniform during wartime led me to ask harder questions about the wars we send young Americans to fight. A democratic country must continually judge whether a war still serves the purpose for which its troops were sent. The duty remains even when an all-volunteer force makes war easy for most citizens to ignore. In August 2021, while serving at the Pentagon as a senior Marine leader's intelligence briefer, my team and I briefed him five times in one day after a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate. America's war in Afghanistan was ending in confusion as the country prepared to mark the attacks' 20th anniversary. The lesson I had taken from Sheehan felt much less abstract. This spring, I visited the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City for the first time. During an immersive audiovisual display, I fought back tears; the emotions it summoned felt nearly as raw as they had in fall 2001. For many young Americans, including my sons, Sept. 11 is history they know primarily through videos, museum exhibits and memorials, not through memories. Recently, over coffee, I pulled a first-edition hardcover of "A Bright Shining Lie" from my bag and slid it across the table to a friend still serving at the Pentagon. I told him about Janovy's class and the reading list he handed us on Sept.12. Janovy had put that book in my path just as my generation was going to war. Twenty-five years later, I passed it on. Our country will ask more young Americans to serve. It owes them honest answers about why they are fighting and how its wars are supposed to end. Sampson Dr. Gary J. Sampson is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and Lincoln native. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Tufts University's Fletcher School and writes on service, leadership, and U.S. national security. Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!