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Thursday, July 13, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
L
ate one night when I was five
years old, unable to sleep, I
wandered out of my bedroom
to find my mom watching TV in our
living room. Despite her futile protests
for me to go back to bed, I sat with
her on the couch to see what she was
watching. The grainy images from our
TV were then quickly etched into my
memory as I watched military planes
taking off and missiles being
launched. Turning to my mom,
I asked what was happening,
and as best as she could with a
sad expression on her face, she
said that “we” were going to
war.
My mom and I were watching
what I later found out to be the
first images of the U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan in late 2001. I
was five years old that night
watching our nation deploy
thousands of soldiers to that
faraway country.
And I am now 21 — and yet
again, I am watching as our
country proceeds to deploy
thousands of more soldiers,
some
younger
than
myself,
to Afghanistan in order to
continue a war that has been
raging for nearly 16 years.
And that is why I question if
“we” are still going to war?
Because
in
that
16-year
expanse,
many
Americans,
myself included, never felt like
the country was truly in a state
of war. There was no period of
rationing for fuel, no utilization
of factories to build new tanks
and military equipment. During
this time, there was no draft to
fill the ranks of our military, no
push in our education and state
departments to teach Arabic
or
Afghani
Pashtun
within
our schools. And there were
no new taxes meant explicitly
to finance both the war and
to comfort the pain caused to
veterans and their families.
Essentially, unless you or
your
family
member
were
enlisted within the military —
life in America was completely
normal.
Because
to
us
as
Americans, war as seen through
our TVs and smartphones is
perfectly normal.
Since the Cold War, we have
had our military engaged in a
near constant state of warfare
that seems to be increasing in
magnitude across the globe.
From Vietnam to Grenada, to
Somalia and now Syria — our
military being in combat is
just a part of present reality.
It is just the accepted standard
that in some distant part of the
world, U.S. soldiers are fighting
and dying. The drone strikes
that kill innocent civilians are
normal. The deaths of special
forces
soldiers
are
normal.
And now, the increase in troop
deployments in Afghanistan,
Syria and Iraq have become
normal.
As
detailed
in
Rachel
Maddow’s
excellent
book
“Drift,” a dramatic detachment
occurred between the American
public and the U.S. military in
which the “country” stopped
going to war, but the military
still did.
This
began
during
and
especially
after
the
war
in
Vietnam. Lack of public support
for the war culminated in a
detachment of the military from
the general public. Congressional
approvals for military operations
became
difficult
to
attain
due to the lack of support for
sending
more
Americans
to
Vietnam. Therefore, subverting
the standard protocol for war
became
more
common
for
the executive branch and the
Pentagon. For example, the War
Powers Act has allegedly been
violated multiple times with no
resulting legal action against
the executive office. War has
essentially
become
easier
to
conduct.
And throughout the entire
process, the American public
has
been
almost
unaffected
by the wars raged in different
parts of the world. No rationing
ever occurred, no new taxes
were levied, no transformation
occurred in our public education
to train a new generation to
deal with terrorism and foreign
policy — instead, from our living
rooms, we sat back and watched
the planes and rockets fly.
Desensitized to the violence,
our country has further divided
into the normalization of the
constant
state
of
warfare,
reaching a point in which it is
almost satirical, with Fox News
airing clips of bombs being
dropped to the tune of patriotic
country music. Why do we even
ask how Roman citizens could
watch gladiators slaughter each
other in the arena?
Our lack of empathy and
understanding
toward
both
veterans and victims of war
is displayed with our current
foreign policy. Military options
are
always
on
the
table,
often
preferred
over
other
alternatives due to our true
lack of understanding of actual
consequences.
The true consequences of
this normalization of warfare
are barbaric and depressing.
And the anguish is experienced
not only by the thousands of
veterans and families who lost
a loved one in combat — but the
innocent civilians caught in the
hell that becomes their homes.
As we watch the escalating
conflicts going on a world away
— thousands upon thousands of
lives are lost and traumatized
in ways that we as American
NISA KHAN
EDITOR IN CHIEF
SARAH KHAN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DAYTON HARE
MANAGING EDITOR
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
War made easy
civilians
only
get
subtle
glimpses of through our twitter
feeds, televisions and the next
Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood
movie.
We as a country are entering
the 16th year in which our
military will be engaged in
combat in Afghanistan. Despite
what my mom said on our couch
that late night in 2001 — “we”
never went to war, our military
did.
— Michael Mordarski can be
reached at mmordars@umich.edu.
MICHAEL MORDARSKI| COLUMN
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Summer Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
A
t the start of this summer
living at home, one of my
goals was to ride my bike
eight miles to and from work,
through
the
neighborhoods
between my suburb and the
downtown
Columbus
area.
At first, I was afraid on the
commute to my restaurant job
— I’m a woman with a fairly
small frame, alone, wearing
a backpack, riding a visibly
fancy road bike. I’m not quite
comfortable enough with my
bike to make repairs if something
happened, and I was scared to
be stranded, alone, female and
carrying precious cargo as I was
in an unfamiliar area of town. I
wanted to stop relying on my car
— and gasoline — to get to work,
but I was having trouble bucking
up the courage.
As the summer went on,
though, I grew tired of paying
for parking meters at work, and I
needed the exercise biking gave
me. In the beginning of June, I
did a practice ride to and from
the restaurant one afternoon
after I got off work and have
been commuting via bike three
times per week ever since.
Lucky for me, I get the opening
shift a lot. At a breakfast and
lunch place, this means I have
to be there by six, which means
I have to leave my house at 5:30
a.m. Just before dawn, hardly
anyone is out. Bexley and the
surrounding areas are serene
and sparsely populated, and I
get to see the sun go up and the
streetlights turn off.
I go from my house down side
streets between average-sized
houses that grow into mansions
as I move further westward.
Between the trees that line the
streets, birds fly freely and low
to the ground across my path,
not expecting humans to be out
and moving so quickly at such
an early hour. Their warning
cries to one another reach my
ears from both sides as I barrel
toward
the
bike
trail
that
borders Wolfe Park, the site of
ancient Adena tribe settlements
I wrote about before.
When the gridded streets of
Bexley open to the curved trail
between the grassy park and
Alum Creek, I can see where the
fog has settled just above the
ground, and above the treeline,
dawn explodes across the sky.
I wonder if Native American
inhabitants were ever up at this
hour, either to begin the day’s
work or because a small child
woke them for breakfast. But
I only ever catch a glimpse of
all this, because I have to pay
attention to where I’m steering.
I never have any worries riding
my bike through Bexley. I know
those streets are meticulously
guarded by the Bexley Police
Department, and recreational
road bikers and even commuters
aren’t a rarity in that area —
mostly because lots of people
who live in Bexley can afford
to buy and maintain the light,
high-speed bikes that are most
desirable for such activities.
The bike path follows Alum
Creek, then crosses over a
newly rebuilt bridge out of
the Bexley area and into the
Franklin Park neighborhood.
On the other side of the creek,
there’s a bench along the path.
I suspected people may sleep
there sometimes, but I had
ridden my bike to work so many
times without seeing anyone
there that I’d forgotten my
suspicions.
One morning, however, I
rode across the bridge and was
distracted, trying to commit
to memory the image of a
particularly beautiful sunrise
over Wolfe Park. I rode under
the bridge’s final arch and BAM
— there was a person right
in front of me. He was a man,
asleep, with a couple plastic
shopping
bags
holding
his
possessions resting below the
wooden boards of the bench.
— Regan Detwiler can be
reached at regandet@umich.edu.
My commute through the heart of it all
REGAN DETWILER| COLUMN
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