I agree, and I believe that no experience is a total loss if a lesson can be extracted, learned and applied to future situations.

As far as I can tell the US learned nothing from the Vietnam experience it has applied to the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 5 years.

I also suspect that medals are rationed out on the basis of about one medal per million dollars in profit to a supplier. Sort of like getting a title while someone else gets a big raise.

The posthumous medals are the biggest travesty, as the raise still goes to living folks.

I believe guilt has numerous sources. You mentioned a big one, a common one.

Arf