The issue of war has come under inspection by both the general public and the media, yet many people seem to not know what we are doing any better after they hear this speculation. Sometimes, people come out with the wrong information that is inaccurate, and this causes a snowball effect which creates many threads diverging from the true story line. When politicians say that America hasn’t really been engaged in war for a very long time, that is simply wrong. The concept of war is rather broad yet easy to understand, and this subject is rather dear to me since my grandpa is a veteran and my cousin is currently serving right now. When politicians say that we are at peace right now, they could never be more wrong. We’re in so many wars that we have lost track of where our troops are.
For example, the recent incident in Niger where our troops were ambushed, resulting in four killed U.S. soldiers, hasn’t come under enough scrutiny. Why were they even there? And what’s the point of sending more and more Americans in harms way if we aren’t getting anything noteworthy accomplished (Park 1). Yet the politicians, the military industrial complex, and the special interests keep telling us lies after lies, that we are in it to win it, and that we will eventually pull our troops out. How long have our troops been fighting in Afghanistan? I doubt many Americans even remember that we are still fighting a war in Afghan since it’s been so long.
When the Trump administration made it so the number of troops would increase, I was surprised since I didn’t even know we had any troops in Afghan in the first place. The public has been lied to when it comes to war, and what’s sad about this is that the money being funneled overseas to watch our soldiers die so we can make arms deals could have been invested in America, rebuilding our infrastructure and helping to solve the Social Security crisis.
- Park, Madison. “Niger ambush: Timeline of attack that killed 4 US soldiers.” CNN, Cable News Network, 24 Oct. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/10/24/politics/niger-ambush- timeline/index.html.
