By Daniel Nardini
For the first 23 years of the 21st Century, the United States has only experienced two or three years of peace. We had either been in two wars that affected many families whose loved ones were fighting and dying in either Afghanistan or Iraq, or we had combat troops engaged in active fighting anywhere in the world. Since the United States was forced to pull out of Afghanistan in August of 2021, the United States has been in what I call a post-war period. In so many ways it is what I witnessed in 1975 when the United States pulled out of Vietnam and the whole of Indochina. Both cases meant a victory for the other side and a defeat for U.S. foreign and military policies. Despite all of this, America then as now is at peace.
No more physical boots on the ground means that the United States must now conduct its foreign policy in a more neutral, indirect way of supplying weapons or giving moral as well as financial support to those countries America believes are in the right in a war. Most Americans simply do not want this country to be at war again for a long time. They do not want to see their loved ones go and die for a questionable fight, or a fight where the moral objectives may be clear today but not so clear in the far future. In other words, Americans do not want to be stuck in another “forever war.” The Afghanistan War was without question the longest war in U.S. history. It lasted 20 years. Worse, it cost tens of billions of dollars ($2.3 trillion to be exact), killed 2,324 American soldiers, and in the end the other side won. However America’s peace came, by victory or defeat, it has come.
It will take a generation for America to heal from this cycle of war, and now America must grapple with a multitude of problems that should have been dealt with in the beginning of the 21st Century. A lot of America’s infrastructure is falling apart. We cannot afford to get involved in another war as that would take away what money we need now to fix this country. The political divide in this country is worse now than ever, and in many ways this was the result of the wars we fought in the beginning of the 21st Century. Whatever can be said about what is happening in this country now, one of them thankfully is not war. America is now at peace, and I keep reiterating that I hope our political leaders have any sense of rationale left to not get us involved in another war where American troops will be fighting and dying for a questionable cause. Please, let us keep America out of war. Please, let us keep America at peace!
America at Peace
By Daniel Nardini
No more physical boots on the ground means that the United States must now conduct its foreign policy in a more neutral, indirect way of supplying weapons or giving moral as well as financial support to those countries America believes are in the right in a war. Most Americans simply do not want this country to be at war again for a long time. They do not want to see their loved ones go and die for a questionable fight, or a fight where the moral objectives may be clear today but not so clear in the far future. In other words, Americans do not want to be stuck in another “forever war.” The Afghanistan War was without question the longest war in U.S. history. It lasted 20 years. Worse, it cost tens of billions of dollars ($2.3 trillion to be exact), killed 2,324 American soldiers, and in the end the other side won. However America’s peace came, by victory or defeat, it has come.
It will take a generation for America to heal from this cycle of war, and now America must grapple with a multitude of problems that should have been dealt with in the beginning of the 21st Century. A lot of America’s infrastructure is falling apart. We cannot afford to get involved in another war as that would take away what money we need now to fix this country. The political divide in this country is worse now than ever, and in many ways this was the result of the wars we fought in the beginning of the 21st Century. Whatever can be said about what is happening in this country now, one of them thankfully is not war. America is now at peace, and I keep reiterating that I hope our political leaders have any sense of rationale left to not get us involved in another war where American troops will be fighting and dying for a questionable cause. Please, let us keep America out of war. Please, let us keep America at peace!