I recently read that we are now enlisting young men and women to fight in the Middle East who were born within a year or two of 9/11. They are the post 9/11 generation. This is an election year. We have troops in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Our dearest “friend” in the Mideast is Saudi Arabia – the same country the majority of the 9/11 terrorists came from. Am I the only one who finds it odd that it is NOT a topic of discussion that we have been at war in the Mideast for over 17 years with no end in sight and no definable goal for when that might happen?
Just imagine for a moment what it is like for the people of the Middle East – especially those young people born after 9/11. Talk about creating the next generation of terrorists. We are doing that so well that we will have to live in fear for another twenty years if not more. Because those young people only know America as the country whose war machine has destroyed their country, killed their families and left nothing but chaos and despair in its wake. Imagine if a Muslim country had invaded us and bombed us for the better part of two decades. I don’t think we’d view it with anything less than hatred and have anything less than revenge in our hearts. The continued attempts at terrorist attacks on American soil is but – in the mind of the people carrying out these attacks – justice for the death and destruction that we have rained down on the Middle East for far too long.
So what is the end game here? What would constitute victory? When would we be able to say that it’s over and time to get out and let those countries deal with their own problems? At what point do we admit that we keep these wars going in order to keep our munition makers happy? At what point do we say no more sons and daughters coming home with missing limbs and damaged brains? At what point do the mothers and fathers of America say that they will no longer allow their children to participate in an endless conflict that provides no discernible benefit to anyone but those munition makers and the politicians they own in Washington?
There was a time when, if America was at war, that war made the front pages of newspapers and led TV news programs every day. Now, the only way we know about the war is when some politician piously praises the sacrifices our young men and women are making. Those politicians mostly forget to mention how much money they get from the people who profit from that war.
So I guess we all continue to pretend it’s not happening, we continue to pretend the next generation is not coming home in body bags or with major parts of their bodies missing, and instead we focus on whether or not Kanye West is psychotic. (Spoiler alert – he is, and not in a good way.)