9/11 is a day, like all Americans, I will never forget. Not only did it shake our country, it changed lives forever. I was in second grade at the time, but the memory is so clear. I knew my dad was in the military, but he was just in the reserves. I never thought a lot about it, he would only train one weekend each month. After September 11th and we decided to go to war, I started to worry. I would overhear my parents talking about the possibility of my dad getting deployed, it ended up happening.
In the ten years since 9/11 my dad has been deployed twice. The first time he was in Iraq and his life was in danger multiple times. I couldn't watch the news because I was afraid he would be the victim of a road side bomb or something. He made it back safely and was deployed again in 2009 to Kosovo. My family has been so blessed that he's only been deployed twice.
9/11 was a day that will never be erased from my memory. My dad's deployments will also always be there. I wish that our country would have weighed the pros and cons more about going to war. We were so hurt as a country that it seemed like the action to take. We've made progress, but this is a war I don't think we can win. It's not against a country, it's against a small percentage of their population who are terrorists. I wish we lived in a perfect world, but perfection is impossible where so much corruption exists. There will always be bad people out there, and we can't get all of them. War destroys the lives of many people, especially the people who live where it's taking place. Many innocent people are killed and lives ruined by our actions. Have we taken more lives of the terrorists or innocent people? What about the number of soldiers we've lost? What about the number of soldiers and police officers these countries have lost helping us? I wonder if the cost of war was taken into account when we declared war. The cost is not just money, but lives. Terrorism needs to be stopped, but we can plan better. We've got both Saddam and Osama in ten years. We all want our soldiers home, we also want terrorism gone. Fact is, we can't have both.
I'm so proud to be an American. 9/11 may have shaken us, but we are standing strong. It was a day that we all were united. 9/11 gave the word hero a whole new meaning. I'm so grateful for all the sacrifices people made that day and in the wars that have followed. We are one nation under god, we must never forget that and the meaning behind it.