The Longest War

As I sat, watching politics as I do every day, the commercial break hit and I waited for the usual Swiffer and Taco John's commercials to play out. In the very middle of one of them it stopped... the screen went black for a moment and Keith Olbermann appeared sitting at a desk that was not his show. 'Breaking News' appeared on screen and he began speaking.

The very last of the combat troops in Iraq were driving, as he spoke, to Kuwait. A reporter was in the convoy and was speaking live with Keith about what was going on, what was going to go on, what people were feeling and when they would be across the border. At one point he said that his vehicle was going to cross the border in 15 minutes. He said the last vehicle in the convoy would cross an hour later.

His car was trailed by what allows him to report live from the other side of the globe, the 'Bloom Mobile', named after David Bloom who was in Baghdad when American forces first attacked. He was a reporter for NBC at the time, and died in 2003. He was the beginning of the war and what he built, this transmitter, the Bloom Mobile, is with them at the end of the war. It allowed Americans to see the end of a hated war, as it happened.

I look at the dates, the years that these events took place. We started this war, ostensibly because of September 11th, 2001. I remember that day, sitting in 4th grade. My teacher comes into the room with a haunted look on her face and turns on the TV for the first time that year. It was the news. People were horrified. Planes had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. I didn't know what that meant at the time. I just knew that it scared a lot of adults, and my classmates that had family there were allowed to go home. I don't remember the days and weeks after, but that horrific event marked the beginning.

I didn't know when or why we invaded Iraq, I knew even less about Afghanistan. I still don't fully understand everything. It was only these last few years when Bush's term ended and Obama was elected into office that I turned to look at the rest of the world, that I realized there's more than just America and That Place Across The Ocean to the world. To see everything that has happened, just since the war has begun, it's made me a better person.

And that makes me sad for those too young to witness this. To grasp the implications of us ending war. My sister, only 11, is far too innocent to know what is happening. I don't know if she even knew we were in a war. Her best friend, just 8, wasn't even born when we were attacked. I wonder what this newest generation will think of us. What they will think of the world. Are we passing along a good legacy? Or will history frown on our actions?

Only time will tell. But we can be happy for now, the war is over and the soldiers are coming home.