President Barack Obama has recently initiated a war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (better known as ISIS), further extending America’s supposed campaign against terrorism that has raged on for over a decade. Upon learning of this, I was relatively shocked at the distinct lack of an outcry from my peers on my social media pages. At least I was until I remembered that it was another part of the routine that our nation has been settled into for our whole lives.

In the aftermath of the fateful September 11^th, 2001 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush sent troops to Afghanistan to combat the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and the nefarious Taliban government, thus commencing the ongoing War on Terror. On March 20^th, 2003, Bush staged an invasion of Iraq after claiming that they possessed weapons of mass destruction. After eight years of this grueling conflict, Obama officially withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011 only to have the United States intervene in the Libyan Civil War to overthrow the Gaddafi government that same year. As of June 14^th of the year of this writing, we are now involved in a military intervention against ISIS, which included a bombing of Syria on September 22^nd.

Essentially, our nation has been at war since we were in preschool. When our parents tearfully gathered us and our siblings in front of the television as we witnessed the Twin Towers collapsing, we could feel our conceptions of the world we only briefly knew collapsing along with them. President Bush followed up with his declaration, seeking revenge for the atrocity the entire nation had seen before their eyes, and our naïve young minds sought it with him, believing he was right to battle al-Qaeda. From a young age, we learned to embrace war and accept it as the norm.

For approximately thirteen years, not a day has gone by where the lives of American soldiers in the Middle East aren’t in jeopardy. This means that there are children who have had parents, elder siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins fighting overseas their entire lives. Here in America, this is something we seem to have all submitted to and we don’t really pay mind to it.

But our generation’s tolerance of warfare has a legitimate negative impact. Without consideration for those affected by war, many young people will grow up to become apathetic adults who never quite stopped to think about what life is like for the children who haven’t seen their fathers in years and may never see them again. With people like that in our voting booths, we may very well never see the end of United States military conflicts. The logistics will never even cross their minds because they grew up with them; we had troops in Afghanistan while they were still learning the alphabet. If our youth is allowed to remain desensitized like this, our recognition of the sheer barbarity of two countries sending their own citizens to battle each other to the death will be all but abandoned by our collective conscience. The fighting will never end, and no one will care.

Obama promised change for America during his 2008 campaign for presidency. He stated that we, as a nation, would pull ourselves together and restore our greatness. Six years later, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a difference at all. We’re fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, just like we were right after 9/11.

Many people who have dealt with abuse for an extended period of time will use a certain three-word phrase when others ask them if they’re alright. We as a generation can now say the same thing whenever the topic of war is brought up: we’re “used to it.”