By: Zach West

As our country continues to fight for our freedom overseas, it is quite normal to hear about conflicts on the evening news.  Tuesday, it was reported that such an incident happened outside of Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.  Why is this relevant?  The conflict brings up the issues of culture, religion and respect.

In Bagram, US troops were given sacks of copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, to burn by NATO officials.  The books were taken from a detention center because it was believed the detainees were leaving notes in them to fuel extremism.   Officials say that the books were burnt inadvertently and the act was unintentional, according to cbsnews.com.

Local Afghanis were outraged by the action and started protesting, thinking the books were being burned based on religion, which was not the case.   U.S. Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, was quick to apologize for the act.

To be quite honest, I do not really see why the conflict made the news.  People in the National Guard younger than I are over there right now waiting to defend our freedom against the established terrorism organization, Al Quada.  And the burning of a few books makes the news?

We are fighting a war, and in war, we cannot afford to care if peoples’ feelings may be hurt by burning books.  In war, people will die. Innocent civilians will die, brave soldiers will die and books will be burned.  I have seen on the news many times protestors burning American flags.

People will say we shouldn’t be over there, or that the locals are tired of U.S. soldiers being stationed in their country, or that we killed the leader of Al Quada already.  To respond, I remember very vividly what happened on September 11, 2001.  I remember turning off the television because I was scared my dad would have to go fight a war.  And if the same group of terrorist is still operating at full capacity in the mountains of Afghanistan, you can bet I believe the job is not done yet.

Close to 3,000 of our own American civilians died that day — men, women and children — and people are outraged over the burning of a few copies of the Quran.  I think people are entirely too soft and empathetic these days.  Once again, this is war.

People all over the map of America — everyday citizens, politicians and everyone in between — need to grow a back bone and realize war is not a pretty thing.  There should have been no apology given by Allen and burning the communication method between detainees needed to be done to ensure the safety of our troops and the goal of our current operation.