I'm a new guy on this forum, but I really enjoyed your comments on this thread.
I served as an Infantry Platoon Leader for 13 months in Iraq and I really get everything that you said. Even when I was in Iraq I wondered what the point of the war was (and the Soldiers in my platoon openly stated how stupid the war was to them too). However, like it sounds like you did, I busted my ass and gave the Army and my fellow Soldiers everything I had. For an example of a "real" leader we need to look at the lower officer ranks and mid level NCOs (Staff Sergeants and Sergeant First Class) in the combat arms sections of our Army. Real leaders don't look like people like Willard "Mitten(s)" Romney who never actually had to face real adversity.
Your ice cream story sounds a lot like what happened to me after my first firefight. After the firefight (which maybe lasted 5-10 minutes at most and resulted in 6 enemy dead and 2 enemy wounded, we had to recover the dead and I never felt so terrible in my life. I just felt completely ashamed of what I had just done. Seeing what my weapons did to people for the first time was a very traumatic event to me. We stuffed the dead into body bags and tied them to the outside of our armored vehicles like you would deer after a hunt and bring them back to our base. There was no way I was actually going to put a dead Iraqi in one of my vehicles. Dead bodies are nasty (I'll spare the description and details unless someone really wants to know). It was as awfull as it sounds.
We got back to our base and the cooks who were attached to my company took it upon themselves to make us a "victory" feast of BBQ ribs. I've never felt so ashamed of anything I ever did in my life and here I was being rewarded with BBQ ribs for it!
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