Have Your Say: War in Iran
Question: In your opinion, why is the United States attacking other countries such as Iran? How does that impact you? How do you feel about it? (Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.)
Atticus Hansen, City College student
It seems it's, like, the most pointless war, I feel like the American Military Industrial Complex has ever pitched to the people of America, because there's, like, not even a pretense of reason behind it.
If we win this war, we'll just simply have more control over Middle East oil. There'll be no one guarding the gate of Hormuz who could help the Gulf Coast countries, which are like the main producers of oil, and we could just keep the petro dollar a consistent force in the economy, so we could just control the economy more. I mean, that's what we stand to lose, right?
It's gonna totally crater this economy. So I think that it's gonna impact all of us ultimately. And it impacts me because I ultimately—though I hate our current government—I want Americans to succeed because it's the country that I was born into, and this is how we'll ultimately just shoot ourselves in the foot and be worse off any way you slice it.
Patricia Chytrowski, Visual Media Design Department faculty
I think that (Trump) has come into this position with not the set of skills that he needs in order to do his job, and he's doing a terrible job and putting our country at risk. He has just demolished so many systems within our democracy that it's questionable whether they will be able to be rebuilt, or how they can be rebuilt after he's out, which he will be out eventually. But how long is it going to take, and how is this new form (of government) going to happen?
I really have a lot of anxiety around it. Just today (the Trump administration) said that young men ages 18-26 had to sign up for selective service, and now there's going to be an automatic enlistment (in case there is a military) draft. I have two 16-year-old boys, so for me, it's very personal.
I really worry about the war and what Trump’s doing, what he's done to our standing internationally, and how that will affect my sons. We're considering moving to Canada. We have Canadian citizenship, I've got passports for my boys, and I've got my passport. I'm seriously considering for college that we would all go to Canada for them, just to get out of this country.
Sampson Patty, City College student
Should we (be attacking other countries)? I don't think so. I also think, conflict and (war), I'm surprised we haven't grown out of it by now. I mean, we have our cars drive themselves, and our computers talk to us. We live in the science fiction age that we've talked about for years, and we still have conflict like that.
How do you think our (country’s) leaders would benefit from resource holding? But more than resource holding, their personal greed for themselves, they're like cups with no bottoms, like they can just take as much as they want.
(The war could affect) the rest of my life. It affects it in some branching butterfly effect kind of way. I'm 26, (so I could be drafted), possibly. But I'm a veteran also, I'm part of the inactive reserve right now.
