I miss that kind of clarity...

Wabash replies with this line when he is asked if he misses the action of wartime. His words sort of eerily linger in the air and I feel like he succinctly elucidates the strangest aspect of life in general- which is to say that age, experience, and wisdom are kin to varying degrees of foreboding, confusion, and doubt. Institutions and individuals begin their lives imbued with a feeling of certainty and exuberance; the passage of time abets the erosion of this clarity as the desire to survive trumps youthful ideological ambition. In the context of this film Wabash is intimating that when he was young he had all faith in the righteousness of his country and his beliefs and actions in his military role. Now, with added decades under his belt he realizes that there is no longer any "cause," life as he now knows it is every man for himself.