4- Iraq & Afghanistan
Two of Americas longest wars has been perusing almost our entire lives, and most of time we never even think about it. I can personally I for a long time I didn’t even know we were at war when I was young, I feel like I didn’t really hear about it until middle school and just quickly excepted it as normal. War being normal is a very interesting concept somethings that most generations of Americans don’t share. In the past war was a time the whole country united to defeat a specific enemy the revolution, world wars, and Vietnam. In our modern-day war goes on with fairly little public attention, with America having a war of terror not this is not a country, or a defined people it’s an ideology. How do you fight an ideology, well to be able to sell this to the American people you have to give it a face, a name, and a location in order to reassure them of the mission. In today’s blog we will be looking at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the longest military conflicts in our nation’s history that has sanded now three Presentences.
The war in Afghanistan 7 October 2001 and has continues on to this day for a grand total of 7 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. The main cause of this war was a retaliation of the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks which were planed and attacked out by the Taliban a terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden. They had a safe base of operations in Afghanistan which was in control by the Taliban. The invasion was led by U.S. forces with initial supported from Canada, Australia, and the U.K., then later a coalition of over 40 countries which included all NATO nations. Officially the aim of the war was to eliminate al-Qaeda and deny them a base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power. The conflict went on for much longer than anyone had thought with the war being the second longest war in United States history right behind the Vietnam War.
Then the Iraq War lasted from 20 March 2003 – 18 December 2011, for a grand total of 8 years, 8 months and 28 days, with U.S. troops still being deplored there to this day. The invasion of Iraq by a United States leading another coalition of nation with the goal tooverthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The war went on for much of the next decade, then as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and against the new Iraqi government backed by the U.S.An estimated 151,000 – 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first four years of the conflict. The U.S. was pulled back into the conflict in 2014 at the head of a new coalition; the insurgency and many dimensions of the civil armed conflict continue. The invasion was planned in part of a declared war against international terrorism and the U.S. believed that Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction. This would be found to be false when the war ended with Saddam dead and country is still in a very turbulent time in its history trying to stabilize once again.
The total cost of the war on terror estimated by some could soon real over six trillion.