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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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