Americans Will Never Understand It
by James Glaser
August 9, 2010

Americans have a hard time understanding what happens in war. This last week 10 doctors were reported shot and killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Here is how the Associated Press reported it:

KATHY GANNON
AP News

Aug 07, 2010 08:58 EDT

Ten members of a medical team, including six Americans, were shot and killed by militants as they were returning from providing eye treatment and other health care in remote villages in northern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the team said Saturday.

Dirk Frans, director of the International Assistance Mission, said one German, one Briton and two Afghans also were part of the team that made the three-week trip to Nuristan province. They drove to the province, left their vehicles and hiked for hours with pack horses over mountainous terrain to reach the Parun valley in the province's northwest.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press that they killed the foreigners because they were "spying for the Americans" and "preaching Christianity."

Frans said the International Assistance Mission, the longest serving nongovernmental organization operating in Afghanistan, is registered as a nonprofit Christian organization but does not proselytize.

Now Americans believe that this is a horrible act of violence against people who were only trying to help the Afghan people, and I agree. However, there is something Americans fail to think about. People who live and fight in Afghanistan have been fighting either foreign invaders or amongst themselves their whole lives.

We have thousands, no, make that tens of thousands of military veterans from the Afghanistan war who will suffer the rest of their lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and those veterans only spent one to maybe six tours of duty in Afghanistan, with at least a year long break in-between those combat tours.

The people in Afghanistan have spent a life-long tour of duty in the combat zone, and for many, they have lived in the combat zone for 40 years or longer. Most Afghanis have never lived any place but in the combat zone of ever-lasting war.

We think war is tough on our warriors, and it is. But we can't even imagine what happens to people who live their whole lives in a state where there is constant war.

So as evil and horrible as the killing of these doctors is, it should surprise none of us. The United States has kept every Afghan in a war zone for almost nine years now. Should we share some of the blame for these killings? I think so.

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