"[I]f I want to go take a vacation and shoot some terrorists in the process, that should be my own business"

Texas Standard speaks to retired Marine Corps. Sergeant Patrick Maxwell, who lives in Austin. Maxwell left the military with an honorable discharge in 2011. More recently he was a volunteer fighter with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

Maxwell says doesn’t necessarily disagree with the U.S.’s handling of ISIS in Iraq, but that his reasons for fighting the terrorists were more personal.

“I’m very libertarian in my beliefs and I don’t think we need to be committing U.S. boots to the ground to do another long war like that, ” he says. “But myself as a private citizen – if I want to go take a vacation and shoot some terrorists in the process, that should be my own business.”