The following originally aired on KCBS.
By Tajah Jones
When I first think of a villain I think of the joker, not Osama bin Laden.Bin Laden and the war seemed distant from my everyday life. What affected me was the racial prejudice against Muslims and people of color following September 11th.
During the last presidential election, there was a poster circulating of Barack Obama with a long beard and a turban. Beneath the image it read, “Obama bin Laden.” The image shocked me as extreme propaganda.
This really struck me when I visited my Muslim cousin in D.C. -- 6 years after 9/11. We went through airport security and my cousin was unnecessarily questioned because of her hijab. As if simply being Muslim made her dangerous – or a terrorist. Until then, I never associated being an American Muslim with Bin Laden. They seemed like two totally different things.
I know he’s supposed to be the scariest man of our time, or the face of evil, but Osama Bin Laden didn’t scare me. The people who don’t question what they hear -- they scare me.
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While deployed in Iraq in 2006 and 2008, Specialist Byron Etta remembers his fellow soldiers wishing they were in Afghanistan. “They said we needed to be there to find and fight Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, rather than being in Iraq,” he said.
As the world settles into life post Bin Laden, Etta thinks the celebrating Americans, like some of the people he served alongside, are taking the easy way out by celebrating the death of the terrorist leader.
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On December 10th, Barack Obama was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee because of “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” Yet, he is planning to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. If this isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is. According to President Obama, his deployment of more troops is necessary because of instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is interesting to think if our President really deserves this award when he is doing just the opposite of striving for peace. Previous recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize dedicated their whole life to fighting for peace and equality.
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When President Obama speaks to a TV-watching public tonight about his plan to increase troops in Afghanistan, he will also be speaking live to an audience of teenage and twenty-something cadets at the United States Military Academy in Upstate New York. The administration has said that setting the speech at West Point is a tribute to the “extremely heavy burden” the Army has carried in fighting the war. But the setting also speaks to the fact that it will be young people, in particular, who will carry the burden of the President’s new commitment to the war.
According to the Web site iCasualties.org, the average age of the 76 U.S. troops who died in Afghanistan in the last two months is 26.
News reports and other media have shown that there is no consensus among young active-duty soldiers about whether Obama’s planned surge is a good idea. An Associated Press reporter spoke to soldiers outside Fort Drum in New York. These soldiers may be among the 34,000 troops President Obama is planning on deploying.
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Tom Risen at Scoop 44 takes a good look at the pattern behind Iraq and Afghanistan war vet suicides on college campuses.
“The same amount of suicides happening among active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are happening among veterans on college campuses,” said Hawthorne, co-founder of the veterans group at George Washington University. “That’s one reason we founded a chapter of Student Veterans of America here, so we can have a place for veterans to come where they can understand each other. There are people on campus who see a guy with the thousand yard stare and the short haircut and they’re like ‘I think I’ll stay away from that guy.”
With the military spread across two wars, nearly 40 percent of the 1.9 million troops who have served in the War on Terror since 2001 have served more than one tour, according to Army statistics. Along with the memory and strain of service, student veterans who are still in their eight-year contract live with the fear of being activated and sent on another tour.
In addition to covering the suicide phenomenon, Risen's piece delves into the reasons behind why some vets find it hard to acclimate into college, and the effect underfunding is having on mental health care for veterans.
Photo by DVIDSHUB
[Part of our LGBT feature spotlight.]
After two tours in Iraq, 28 year old Anthony Woods decided he couldn’t lie any longer. He came out as gay, and was discharged under the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.
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(aired on WABE FM on December 6, 2008)
I was checking my email the other day and I had a message from my cousin Ted, in Iraq. He sent me a picture of soldiers in a dugout. It was so cool. You could see the dust blowing up and the soldiers laying behind this big thing returning fire. I immediately replied but of course I didn’t expect anything back for a couple of weeks or months.
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