The war in Afghanistan has been going on for centuries, beginning in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attack on the Twin Towers. As a country, we couldn’t just stand by and do nothing while extremist groups terrorized the world.
Or so I was told.
We’ve been at war with terrorist groups in the Middle East my entire life and, despite my involvement in the military and keeping up on current events, I don’t know hardly anything about this war other than what I’ve been told.
I was told people in Afghanistan, in the Middle East in general, weren’t really people at all. They were all terrorists. Monsters. Horrible beings who didn’t care about life. People with dark skin, robes and wraps on their head were either to be killed or feared.
I was told they would bomb us, shoot us, torture us if they ever got their hands on us. They would sacrifice their own blood just to hurt us, then turn around and justify themselves with their religion. Islam was the worst religion of them all, filled with hatred.
This is what I was told by people who were there to witness the attacks in New York, and by people who have gone overseas to fight a war I don’t see a point in fighting.
I’m a 2000 baby, born barely a year before real terrorists changed this country’s mindset about the Middle East forever. I don’t remember 9/11. Most of my generation doesn’t remember it either.
What I do remember is what people told me about the horror, the desire to fix the wicked ways of the Middle East and end the terrorism of the world. Even after being told about it, those feelings never quite hit home for me. I get the feeling many people my age are the same way.
The problems we are facing aren’t overseas, among the extremist attacks. They are on our home front.
COVID-19, housing crises, homelessness, drug abuse, immigration and trying to generally survive in America are the issues on our minds. And while living may be easier to do here than elsewhere, we aren’t living elsewhere.
We are here. We have issues here. From my point of view, granted it’s a view without having experienced terrorist attacks, we should be focusing on fixing our own problems before we send our military overseas to fix someone else’s.
My life of living in a country at war hasn’t felt like I’ve been living with war at all. After joining the military, I was told I’m more likely to die in a car accident here in the U.S. than I was to die in combat overseas.
What’s the point in that?
My generation has been living with war, but we might as well have not been until now. Only after news of the chaos happening in Afghanistan because of the U.S. pulling out troops did it occur to me that I am undereducated and under informed.
Even after all I was told from family, friends, military and teachers, I still don’t know hardly anything about the war in Afghanistan.
I don’t know how to feel about the current Taliban takeover, the fleeing refugees, people so desperate to get away they are falling off airplanes. The U.S. retreat seems like a huge failure after 20 years of struggle, but it’s also a relief to pull out of a fight that seems so pointless now.
I have no doubt more terror is going to follow in the wake of our retreat. But from the perspective of a young adult who has only ever known the struggles of home, I’m feeling both a huge sense of defeat along with massive relief.
All I can do as a student is to keep reading and learning about the situation, keep an open mind and try to understand more than just what I’ve been told. Because what I’ve been told is definitely not the whole story.
Anteia McCollum can be reached at [email protected]
Louis Townsend
Hello, Anteia, my name is Lee Townsend, a 1961 journalism graduate of the U of I. My first war memories are from mid-1941 when my older cousins and some uncles were either drafted or joined the military in response to World War Two. I was four when we were attacked. I fought that war in our cow pasture near New Meadows along with two other four-year-olds. I can recall few years between then and now when this country was not at war. Many of those conflicts seemed to have to do with treaties we'd made with allies. My time in the military was between 1961 and 1964 and didn't involve combat. I think it would be outstanding to remain safe and know what type of appropriate response to an attack on this country would be best. Thank you for giving your opinion, Anteia.