Today’s Hot Topic: Afghanistan
The reasons OEF was worth it and what we can learn from it today, by someone who was there in 2011.
I wanted to come on here very briefly and say one thing.
Many veterans and soldiers are having questions bounce around their heads in regards to Afghanistan. You feel robbed of your previous duties because many of you lost brothers and sisters.
And many Americans are caught in the middle in thinking one way or the other.
Let me crush that thought process right now. There are hundreds of things that prove OEF was worth it and here are some takeaways and what we can learn about helping out our fellow humans and nature:
- You helped your fellow Americans move on to becoming missionaries for other countries instead of having to fight a war on the home front. We got to explore nature and expand on science and history.
- You helped defend a country’s safety, which in turn allowed individuals who were terminally ill to pass on peacefully, in a country not at war on the home front.
- You even helped people who were terminally ill in Afghanistan, that you have not met and who lived in a town that you lived in. You took the bullets meant for them. Their family is very grateful for you. Without you they would have been tortured for fun, they would have been a training tool for child soldiers, or they would have been strapped with a bomb.
- You took a lot of the attention away from undercover operatives in Afghanistan. Your loud trucks allowed them to slip by unnoticed. As fear gripped their whole world, you gave them a five-second moment of peace.
- As we see what is happening now in Afghanistan, you prevented terrorists from running free. You kept them “at bay”.
- To all the women who were able to read and become educated because you were living in a town that the Taliban did not secure, those women are eternally grateful for you. Some of those women actually immigrated to the United States because of you and became lawyers, mothers, doctors, or work at Starbucks — and unbeknownst to either of you, they may even have served you. That is international aid.
- There were many children who did not have to watch their parents die because of you and they were not forced to becoming child soldiers.
- There were many terrorists who were going to do very disgraceful things, but your bullet ended their terror before it even began. You prevented lifelong trauma and/or disfigurement for individuals.
- We have all heard about sanctuary cities. It is because of your diligence and your sacrifice that many Americans who were in a country were able to be protected by Afghans. You saved Americans, by showing Afghans what they were fighting for. You gave Afghanistan hope.
- You saved people from all over the world from terrorists who were going to board a plane the next week, but they ran into your convoy first and you saved thousands.
It is because of you that the world still spins. You halted all the men who would have came after you and our American families and Constitution.
Never let anyone take that from you!
There would have been more bombings around the world that would have occurred — if there were people to man those “missions”. There would have been more LGBTQ+ murders in the Middle East and in the US.
And many more!
Did you not know your impact? You do now.
You gave the world their life. Never regret the work you accomplished.
Give people a reason to pay it forward to the veteran community who suffer from TBI, PTSD, and loss of limbs.