Since President Barack Obama took office last January, he has made an effort to be transparent with Americans, taking to YouTube to broadcast his political agenda and even lifting bans on media coverage of the war that had been in place since the backlash during the Vietnam era.
However, the disconnect of the American people has allowed for the conflict in Iraq to wage on, as this week marks the seven-year anniversary of the war.
The anniversary has been a quiet one, and it seems too many Americans have forgotten about it, especially when we continue to let domestic issues overshadow what is going on outside of the country. This is an attitude the country cannot afford to keep, as this is how we will be remembered in years to come. What’s even scarier is that the history books will mark these years as a time of war for our country, despite our living like we’re in a time of peace.
Our daily lives might not be bombarded with media coverage of the war, nor should they be. The historical health care reform struggle in Congress was surely worthy of wall-to-wall coverage, but it has managed to push the country’s two wars too far off the radar.
We cannot continue to live completely unaware of the situation overseas. Since 2003, 4,386 American servicemen and women have died fighting in Iraq. Six have been killed this month, a number that has fallen sharply in recent years, but as long as American blood is being shed, the conflict deserves our attention.
A Newsweek cover dated March 8 claimed “victory at last” regarding democracy in Iraq. The magazine, though it stated, “It may not be “mission accomplished’&-but it’s a start,” is still making a premature proclamation. On March 7, 37 were killed on Election day in Iraq as a result of 136 attacks, The Washington Post reported. Painting too positive of a picture while we continue to be in a time of war allows for the continuation of the war.
No matter how we sugarcoat it, the United States is at war. Obama announced in February of 2009 that by Aug. 31, 2010, the combat mission in Iraq would cease. But all promises by politicians should be taken with a grain of salt, and challenged if not met. We must not forget about Iraq this week, on the seven-year anniversary of the war. Instead, we should continue to investigate, question and take this as a reminder that we should continue follow the situation closely, so that someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, this chapter goes down in the history books as finished.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
