Last November, I had the great fortune to have turned 23 years old. Everyone who knows me knows that I view the world through politics. It’s the filter through which I see everything, all the time. When I look back on my 23 years on Earth, I think of the political moments that have taken place over that 23-year time span. One stat always stops me in my tracks no matter how many times I revisit it: the United States has been involved in some sort of military conflict every single day I’ve been alive, data from ThoughtCo suggests.
Under the War on Terror, the United States waged a severe bombing campaign in the Middle East region. According to reporting from Al-Jazeera, the United States has bombed at least ten different countries since 2001. This sheer violence has followed the country regardless of which party is in power.
I find this completely saddening and disheartening. When I read through all of the operations, at times it makes me ashamed to be American in moments of blunt introspection. We’ve always been told that these conflicts are to protect our freedoms here at home, that without these invasions of sovereign nations, we wouldn’t have the freedoms we enjoy.
Yet the question I always come back to is whether these forever wars are worth the death and destruction that follows. Not only for the people living in the Middle East/North African region, but for our fellow citizens who go to fight in them. Most of the members of the U.S. military come from working class backgrounds. Donald Trump, for example, dodged the Vietnam War draft in 1969 due to “bone spurs.” It’s worth noting that the Trump family’s wealth was estimated to be in the multi-million dollar range by the 1960s, a 2018 New York Times report showed.
Imagine the shock when the U.S. and Israel jointly struck Iran in the early morning of Feb. 28. The strikes come as a major escalation of a long standing, old Western-style standoff between Iran and the Israeli-American coalition. This standoff has been slowly heating up since Trump took office in January 2025. After an almost two-week-conflict (deemed the Twelve Day War) this past summer, the latest escalation seems to be trending in a familiar direction, a direction in which there is no end in sight. The main motivation for this attack comes from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been set on attacking Iran since at least the 1990s, as part of the ultimate goal of a “greater Israel.” A 30-year wish that a genie in Washington D.C. has finally granted him.
The most horrifying moment from the strikes was an all-girls elementary school in Iran that was completely leveled by Israeli-American munitions. According to reporting from The Guardian, the death toll of these strikes remains at 168, most of whom are school children.In an interview on March 1, President Trump stated that more American deaths were “likely” and that the likelihood was simply a byproduct of military conflict. I find President Trump’s callous comments to be disrespectful to the American working class, since we are the ones who bear the brunt of this brutal action domestically. I urge you to question this action, and to remember the innocent lives lost at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump.
