'Only the dead have seen the end of war'

'Only the dead have seen the end of war'

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, better known as the DEA, identified three agents who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan this week. One of the agents, Mike Weston, was a friend of mine.

In fact, in a series I filmed for Al Jazeera about war last year, Mike was profiled in the first episode, in which I tracked down six former classmates of mine from U.S. Marine officer training in Quantico, Virginia. We were the first class to graduate into the new millennium and had no idea that with 9/11 a year away, our worlds would soon be turned upside down. I wanted to see how so many years of war had affected their lives.

Mike's in part two (below), you can find part one here.

Mike could have been anything he wanted. He was smart - not your average smart, but scary smart. In fact, he was in Harvard Law School when he decided to enlist in the Marine infantry.

Surrounded by the best and the brightest, he was offended by his classmates' sense of entitlement to the six-figure careers and power that would come with their high-profile postings in the nation's elite law firms after graduation. Instead, Mike craved the feeling of making a difference. He became addicted to it after multiple deployments to Iraq.

He eventually left the Marine Corps and joined the DEA. But he wasn't satisfied with the undercover work he did in the States, so he volunteered for a two-year tour in Afghanistan. To him, it seemed that nothing he did in the US felt as important as what he could do in the war zones.

Reports of people dying by the hundreds have filled the press this week. It's nearly impossible, I believe, to wrap the mind around the personal tragedy behind such numbers. It takes knowing one, absorbing the loss of one, to begin to even imagine the cumulative suffering of so many.

Mike isn't the first friend I've written about dying in the wars. I wish he would be the last, but I'm reminded of - and saddened by - the old quote, "Only the dead have seen the end of war".