Here’s how much of your life the United States has been at war
Snip:
The speaker was ABC journalist Martha Raddatz, and the point is the key one in the intro: The graduates have spent half their lives with America at war.
It's a startling idea, but an incorrect one. The percentage is almost certainly much higher than that.
Using somewhat subjective definitions of "at war" -- Korea counts but Kosovo doesn't in our analysis, for example -- we endeavored to figure out how much of each person's life has been spent with America at war. We used whole years for both the age and the war, so the brief Gulf War is given a full year, and World War II includes 1941. These are estimates.
But the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan in (late) 2001 means that anyone born in the past 13 years has never known an America that isn't at war. Anyone born after 1984 has likely seen America at war for at least half of his or her life. And that's a lot of Americans.
the rest
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/18/heres-how-much-of-your-life-the-united-states-has-been-at-war/?tid=sm_fb
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unless you are the type that likes the drama. If people really cared how much time 'at war' we have, a lot of our (and by 'our' I mean 'OUR', inclusive me, but 99% likely NOT you) problems as veterans wouldnt exist.
I just read this thing about taking pictures on flights...flight attendant says to a dude "i dont feel safe being photographed" and kicked him off the plane. So yeah, being 'at war' to that flight attendant validates his abuse of some power. Can you understand what Im saying.
Yes I know that in particular the iraq war (my war) was exceptionally draining on the economy but the larger economic problems of the wealth gap and all that stuff - conducted behind the smokescreen of 'we're at war!'.
To this OIF veteran (we didnt have fancy numbers back in 2003, it was just "Iraq"
, this article strikes the same chord in me as all of those 'thanks for your service' people say.
