By Reynaldo Leal

An Islamist regime with ties to terror cells wants to create weapons of mass destruction and has become a danger to national security.

Sound familiar?

Iran – not Iraq – has become the new potential battlefield for American forces. Its threats against U.S. naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, constant pressure from Israel over nuclear proliferation, and talk of a petroleum blockade have moved a fight with Iran past the point of hypothetical.

This is the time to learn from history and not repeat it.

Cpl. Ian Stewart was killed on Dec. 12, 2004, when he was ambushed on the second floor of a house in Fallujah, Iraq. When my platoon finally retrieved his mangled body from the burning building, four other Marines had also been killed, and a dozen more had been injured.

I was a private first class then. My first tour of duty to a foreign war took me to the largest urban assault in Marine Corps history since the battle of Hue City, Vietnam, in 1968. I was certain that the war I was fighting in was right, perhaps even noble.

That night, however, I lay on the concrete floor of a schoolhouse, the fog of war still clouding my brain. I shook uncontrollably from the cold and the effects of coming down from the biggest adrenaline rush I had ever experienced.

I realized then the simplicity of war. War was ugly. I was alive. My fellow Marines were not.

I now wonder, with the luxury of both life and hindsight, if it was all worth it. If things could have been different.

Did Americans feel any safer after that day? Were they freer on Dec. 13, 2004, than the day before? Did anyone, outside the brotherhood of infantrymen and immediate families, even care?

I may never know the answer.

The end of the war in Iraq always seemed so far away when I was kicking in doors in Fallujah or patrolling along the Euphrates River.

First, we had to stop Saddam from creating “weapons of mass destruction.” We were convinced that Iraq had acquired the necessary ingredients for nuclear warheads and we could not allow the evidence to be a mushroom cloud over Israel or Europe.

When we couldn’t find any real trace of weapons, because there were none, we rebranded the war to one of liberation. Again, we were certain we would be treated as heroes by all Iraqis once Saddam and his sons were ousted. It would never be that simple.

A power vacuum was soon created when we disbanded the Iraqi Army and police forces for being Saddam loyalists. Insurgent elements took advantage of the lack of national leadership and Sunni disenchantment. The battle shifted to a new enemy as Al-Qaeda arrived in Iraq.

By the time the last military vehicles crossed the border into Kuwait on Dec. 18, 2011, the Iraq War had claimed 4,487 American lives, injured more than 30,000 service members and estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of Iraqi lives, according to the Department of Defense.

The Iraq War took up most of my young adult life and stripped away the innocence that comes with being an American civilian. It will shape my personality until the day I die. Combat tends to leave scar tissue on both the body and mind.

Along with me are about two million other Americans, roughly one percent of those old enough to serve in the military, who will have to answer the question of whether the war we fought in was just.

We supported our troops, despite losing all interest in their daily battles and struggles soon after the 24-hour coverage of combat stopped. We didn’t even notice when some new veterans began to join the ranks of the unemployed, homeless and sick.

Maybe, if everyone had a little skin in the game, Americans would have noticed as the coffins kept flying in from overseas.

Therein lies the problem with it all, why the war continued for so long. It’s hard to convince people a war should end when they didn’t know we were still fighting in the first place.

Americans ended up paying for the war – all $700 billion of it – the way we pay for everything else in this country. Credit. It’s hard to make people feel invested when they never had anything to lose.

The war ended officially on Dec. 31, 2011, not because we finally beat our enemy, or the American people demanded it. It didn’t even end because the president kept his campaign promise to get us out. It ended because the people of Iraq refused to continue giving us immunity.

Iran doesn’t have to be the same. We can be intelligent, patient, and not allow any country to drag us into another long and expensive fight.

Americans need to know that revenge may feel good, but only for as long as their attention span will allow it.

Shock and awe is great. Flag-draped coffins are not.

Knowing what I know now, there would have to be a real good reason for anyone to tell me that my son, who is 4 years old now, will ever need to place his life on the line for war.