American Studies students were asked to write a letter, this letter would be sent to a government official on the topic of terrorism. The letter would explain the causes and effects of the War on Terror as well as stating the problem and solution. Relevant evidence was to be used while writing both claims and counterclaims backing up the students’ ideas. After students were done with their letter, they were asked to mail it to a government official of their choice, they were also asked to figure out a way to get their information outside of the classroom to educate others on the causes, effects, problem and solution to terrorism. Four students decided to share portions of their letters with the Satellite.

“The War on Terror, and whether America should continue fighting in it, has been an extensive debate recently. Equal amounts of Americans support either side of the argument. Terrorist organizations’ self-centered beliefs on religious, social, or political aspects of our world causes them to act in a savage way just for some sort of political gain; these actions cannot be tolerated. I believe that our country should continue fighting for the safety of our people to eradicate terrorism.”

-LE

“I believe that we need to stop profiling Arabs as Muslim terrorists. The most publicized terror attacks against the USA are by Muslim extremists. Despite that fact, many people who practice Islam are peaceful people who just want to exist undisturbed alongside others. Despite this, the ideas of Islamophobia cause innocent people to be injured, and even killed in some cases, by ignorant individuals. These individuals misunderstand others’ beliefs.

Terrorists can be people of any race, religion or gender. There is no way to know if the person next to you on the bus has a pipe bomb in their bag or a bottle of water. Simply judging someone on the color of their skin or way they dress causes many issues in modern society. For example, according to The Center of Investigative Reporting, twice as many acts of terrorism were committed by alt-right extremists than by Islamist extremists.”

-MB

“My concern is about the illegal immigrants you’ve been so worried about. I feel there are other things we should definitely work on before you start to rule them out for being horrific people. I feel we should be more worried about our economy and global warming. These things really have our country worried and I feel they should be addressed first.“

-CK

“The war on terror is expensive and these funds could have been used for homeland security, or paying off America’s debts. Since we started bombing ISIS, the drone strikes have cost over 1 billion dollars. Each day costs around 8.2 million dollars in operating costs. America is over 20 trillion dollars in debt and counting. The war on terror isn’t stopping soon if we continue to execute these airstrikes, which will cost us more money.

Most of the middle eastern countries resent us for having our troops in their country and invading in their matters and government. Stopping the war on terror will improve relations with the Middle Eastern government seeing that we would stop killing their people and invading their countries. The second gulf war has 151,000 civilian deaths so far, according to the Iraq Family Health Survey. These deaths would have never happened if we didn’t invade Iraq. We should stop operations in other countries to improve international relations.”

-JL