Andrew Hamilton served four months fighting the Islamic State group, Turkey and the supporters of Bashar Assad in northern Syria. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from a conversation with him, where he talks politics, history, literature and video games.

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In many ways, Hamilton isn’t too different from many young men his age. At only 19 years of age, he had planned on joining the U.S. Air Force. Originally from Houston, Hamilton’s original dream school was the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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When that plan failed, he went with his second option: travel halfway across the world and put his life on the line for people he had never met in the name of a socialist revolution.

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“I always tell people it was a series of sketchy life decisions,” he said. Throughout high school, however, Hamilton saw “the U.S. unravel politically and I woke up to the fact that we weren’t always making the right decisions.”

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Hamilton’s decision to travel to the Middle East was a way to show the world that the “American spirit is better than the American government.”

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So, like the Americans who volunteered to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, Hamilton joined the People’s Protection Units, better known by its Kurdish acronym, the YPG.

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Kurdistan is a loosely defined region encompassing regions in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. The YPG is primarily composed of Kurdish militants, but receives thousands of foreign volunteer fighters every year.

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Hamilton, who identifies as a libertarian socialist, was allured by the group’s idea of “democratic confederalism.”

“I saw the revolution,” he said. “The cops there weren’t occupiers, they were neighbors.”

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“Everybody knew each other. If someone was corrupt then, they would have to answer to their neighbors,” he added.

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Experts who study the region, however, see the situation differently. “Democracies can’t be built at gunpoint, they have to grow organically,” said Gordon Adams, professor emeritus of international relations at the School of International Service at the American University.

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Adams and Hamilton agree on the ultimate goal for the YPG and other Kurdish militias: independence.

“This will ultimately be decided by force of arms,” Adams said, “which isn’t too different from how a number of countries were formed.”

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Independence isn’t likely, however. “There are just too many interested parties -Turkey would lose half of Anatolia, Syria would lose a big chunk, Iran would lose a big chunk, and Iraqi Kurdistan sits on top of strategically important oil reserves,” Adams said.

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So why do Americans, like Hamilton, continue to volunteer? “It’s the Hemingway effect - a valiant battle and a hopeless cause,” according to Adams.

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Hamilton acknowledges this. He cited Hemingway’s seminal work, “For Whom the Bells Toll,” as an inspiration for having influenced his politics, and turned him into an anti-fascist.

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He sees himself in the same mold as the anti-fascists fighters in Spain during the 1930s. However, his surroundings weren’t so poetic.

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“Living conditions were miserable,” he said, emphatically.

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He added, “Most of the food we ate was rotten, I was losing weight, I was smoking to kill hunger because I didn’t have enough food to feed myself.”

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This habit shows. During a 90-minute interview, he went through half a pack of cigarettes.

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But he also has many memories that stuck with him -- like his fellow soldiers teaching him to ride motorcycles in the desert, or buying modifications for his rifle at the bazaar in a town near his base.

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Ultimately, Hamilton believes in the Kurdish cause because he sees that they have the higher moral ground. Unlike the Islamic State group, “We don’t execute our prisoners, when we captured their fighters; I gave one of them a cigarette,” Hamilton said.

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He mentioned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently apologized for Canada’s decision in 1939 to prohibit the MS St. Louis from docking at Canadian ports. Many of the passengers were Jewish who would go on to die in the Holocaust.

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“How can you do that, and then at the same time ignore the thousands of Yazidi, Kurdish and Shia refugees?” Hamilton said.

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But he also has hope and speaks highly of his experiences with the Kurdish people. “Everywhere we went people would invite us in and cook feasts for us, and you just don’t know what to do,” he said.

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Lucas Chapman, another American volunteer who fought with the YPG, confirmed much of this. “In all my travels I have never seen a bigger hospitality culture, every house you pass will invite you in for tea and food,” he said.

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