United States Activities In The Middle East

As continues to drone on through the years, the toll it has taken on American society continues to draw more and more controversy each passing year. Looking back through history, it would seem that this is nothing new for the world power. After the second world war, American support and morale for each war has drastically gone down. From Vietnam and the Cold War, all the way up into modern combat in the middle east, a similar theme began to arise; American citizens don’t entirely trust the government in determining when they should declare war, if at all, and when troops need to be withdrawn.

More specifically, whether or not the government is sending it’s military to protect the freedoms of American citizens, or to work in securing it’s own political and nationalistic global agendas. “Why are we even still there in the first place?”

A line uttered countless times during the unfortunate circumstance that military and politics are brought up during the family Christmas get-together.

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For many, the answer is clear. To protect the good ‘ol U.S. of A. -but for a lot of others, the answer doesn’t seem so black and white. The United States’ war on terror seemed very clear to people at first with the horrific events of 9/11 taking place in 2001. Many Americans felt a sense of dread and urgency to take action in protecting the nation from the terrorist threat of Al-Qaeda. However, as the war on terror in the middle east has gone on, and new terrorist organizations have risen and fallen, many now feel that the American military has overstayed it’s welcome in a series of ups and downs and confusing tactical choices.

Unsurprisingly, the

Just 2motivations of war have been a polarizing discussion that American people have debated over for decades. What may be surprising to some however, is that the soldiers that are there on the ground level can have mixed feelings about their orders as well. The New York Times article “War Without End”, written by C.J. Chivers takes a deep dive into one infantryman’s hellish journey through the war-torn middle east and beyond, as well as analyzing the decisions made by the United States Government and it’s leaders pertaining to military involvement in such regions. Chivers’ first statement describes the motivational arc that the infantryman as well as many others in his position went through during their tour. “The Pentagon’s failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan left a generation of soldiers with little to fight for but one another.” Chivers begins to tell the story of Specialist Robert Soto, who was in middle school during the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Soto felt an immense need to defend his country so much so that at age eighteen, he gave up his college dreams of theater and entertainment and enlisted in the U.S. Army. During this time of initial enlistment, Soto felt pride and a justification for what he was doing. “Several sergeants who trained him had been to Iraq and Afghanistan; he regarded them as the most impressive people he had ever met”, Chivers recalls. During Soto’s training before being deployed, he was placed under the command of Staff Sgt. Nathan Cox, a man whom Soto developed a deep respect for. This was the man that would lead Soto and his squad into the nightmarish landscape that was the Korengal outpost in Afghanistan, known morbidly as “The Valley of Death” to the soldiers. Chivers narrates, “At the turn into Korengal, as the helicopter roared up the canyon in which aircraft often came under fire, Soto’s heart beat fast.

The aircraft touched down inside a perimeter of bunkers around plywood shacks. The soldiers charged out to a barrier wall. Soto reached it, noticed the grim faces of his sergeants and went down to one knee, rifle in hand, brow beading sweat. The grunts from Battle Company, who were rotating out as Just 3Viper Company rotated in, laughed.” Soto’s initial fear heading into The Valley of Death was but a mere prologue to his upcoming experiences in a place that he would come to know as a disparaged quagmire of fear and unknowing. The Taliban that these men were hunting were illusive and ruthless. Soto began to realize a harsh truth about the kind of war he was fighting. Most of the people that inhabited this place were unarmed citizens that Soto was ordered to protect by day, and armed combatants by night. As Soto began to form an unbreakable bond with his squad mates, the horrors of war began to sink in.

Chivers goes on to tell, “More violence awaited them. Within weeks, an explosion killed a staff sergeant from another company and wounded two more soldiers as they tried to reach the outpost in a convoy up Route Victory.” Day by day, Soto began to lose sight of his initial pride and motivation as his mission became less about eliminating terrorists and winning the hearts and minds of the indigenous people, and more about pure survival. His most crushing blow came just a few days after one of his friends was killed by stepping on an IED, when Sgt. Cox, the man Soto respected more than anyone else there, was also killed in action when the Humvee he was in was hit by a bomb. It was here that Soto had a moment of realization, as Chivers tells it, “Soto was no longer the teenager who enlisted to protect his city. Grief and rage and powerlessness brought with them the enlisted infantry soldier’s timeless realization: The best guys always seem to lose, he thought.”

Soto began questioning the orders of his superiors after a supposed squadron of Taliban that him and his team ambushed and wiped out were later said to be men from a local village looking for a lost girl in the mountains. There was no way for him to know if this was true or not, but soon after, Soto began to wonder why his company was still deployed here, as their missions were failing one after another. He began to contemplate what was actually being done by the U.S. military there, and as soon as the feeling of pride and motivation were completely gone, the only thing left for Soto to worry about was whether or not he was going Just 4to make it home in one piece. Soto did make it home eventually, and the war in the middle east would continue to rage on long after his time there.

A quote from Soto in the article reveals how the reflection of his time there has brought him to the disparaging question of whether or not any of what him and his squadron survived through in Afghanistan made any real difference to the world around him. Soto reflects, “I try to be respectful; I don’t want to say that people died for nothing, I could never make the families who lost someone think their loved one died in vain.” And yet, it isn’t difficult to see why feelings like these have been felt throughout the history of the United States’ bloody and complicated wars. As a grunt with boots on the ground, even as a mere civilian, one can begin to question the overall motives of these large conflicts. This is often compounded by the lack of transparency from the U.S. government. As time has gone on from the prideful victory and sacrifices made by the entire country in WW2, the anti-war sentiment at home has grown much stronger than it ever was. People question why the United States is putting these brave men and women through such travesties in faraway lands to achieve a goal that is never thoroughly clear to the people of America, much less the soldiers themselves.

Many believe that the time, effort, and money spent overseas should instead be used to repair the country’s own backyard. When comparing articles such as “War Without End” to classic reports from WW2 like Ernie Pyle’s “Brave Men”, the titles alone should suffice to display the difference in public opinion on the current era’s war. In “Brave Men”, Pyle gives his chilling account of the European frontlines, one day after D-Day. While the absolute hell of war is still in full display, and arguably ten times worse than modern day combat, the key difference in “Brave Men” is the clear level of appreciation shown by Pyle throughout the literature that shows how prideful the American people were of the U.S. military at that time. Pyle digresses, “I want to tell you what the opening of the second front

Just 5in that one sector entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.” The sheer sense of respect and appreciation can be heard in Pyle’s tone here. While the events of D-Day in contrast to combat in the middle east were more straightforward in a violent and blunt way, the reporter still has a greater understanding for why the soldiers were there doing what they were ordered to do. The American civilian population of the time had this understanding as well. Take Ted Nakashima’s “Concentration Camp: U.S. Style” as another prime example of the country’s support of the war effort during WW2.

During this account, Nakashima describes his experiences in one of the “resettlement” centers that the U.S. government began forcefully relocating Japanese Americans to during WW2 because of the conflict with Japan. He illustrates the center as “...a penitentiary—armed guards in towers with spotlights and deadly tommy guns, fifteen feet of barbed-wire fences, everyone confined to quarters at nine, and lights out at ten o’ clock.” Clearly, if the general American population was comfortable with this taking place at the time, the support for the war effort was very high. If something like this happened in today’s American society, say, if all Muslim Americans and refugees were rounded up and put into prison camps, the American people would riot in the streets. With the historical context analyzed and compared, another form of controversy arises.

More specifically, another question. If American people are so prone to becoming upset over the foreign affairs of our military, then why are the enemies that the military is fighting overseas comprised of civilians? Americans would find some of the practices and beliefs that take place over in the middle east completely inhumane and horrifying, yet some, but not all, of the civilians there not only support it, they take up arms and become the militia that fights for it. This is because the threat to one’s values and beliefs is what causes a lust for war. If the tables were turned, and American values and beliefs were threatened on home soil, there would be a great number of

Just 6Americans ready and eager to wage total war on wherever the threat was coming from. The main debate does not lie in the question of “why is our military there?” it is seated in the conversation of whether or not the United States has an obligation to intervene on someone else’s beliefs if those beliefs are malicious and cause internal harm to the society in which they manifested themselves. And if not, then who will? This is the controversy that will continue to polarize the nation as long as America exists.