Exposing Exonians to War

The Iraq war lasted 8 years, cost nearly 4,500 American lives, more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and more than 800 billion dollars. Yet, when the American fatality count was at 4,000, only 28% of American adults could cite that number, emphasizing the reality that many people have a minimal understanding of the war. At Exeter, we like to think that we are different, because we can form educated opinions and are preparing to become engaged citizens. But is that completely accurate?The Exeter bubble can create an environment in which it is easy to forget about events that occur outside of our vicinity. Many students do not regularly read a newspaper, and we especially noticed a general lack of knowledge related to recent American wars. For Mr. McConnell’s War and Peace class, we created a Twitter feed focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an attempt to gauge whether Twitter was the best way to get news to students who may not read a paper newspaper or traditional news website. We publicized the page and tweeted for about a month, reaching about 50 followers. Our content combined basic statistical and timeline information with material on drone policy, torture and prisons, veteran issues and current events.We spoke to students and learned that the page had little effect on students’ knowledge. Many students reported that they skimmed or overlooked the material, and did not read attached articles. One student said that he saw the tweets, but only clicked the link if the headline struck him. They followed the page because they liked the idea of it or wanted to improve their Twitter ratio because we followed back, but the material did not sink in. Our findings became even more interesting when we sent an anonymous multiple-choice survey to a random sampling of students. Of the 32 students who participated, only 13% reported being very informed about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and only 6.5% felt like they knew enough about the War on Terror. 61.5% knew basic facts but not details, and 74% wanted to learn more.We can conclude that the majority of students acknowledge that they do not have a detailed knowledge of the wars and want to learn more, and based on the reactions to our page, we can conclude that Twitter is not the most effective way to present that information to students. However, other news sources such as apps or traditional sites are not working either, considering that the majority does not know details about the war but would like to.We found that the more startling responses were in the minority. 22.5% said that they don’t really know anything about the wars, and 19.5% said that they don’t care, or that this isn’t relevant to them. In such cases, if students do not care to learn about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the mode of news delivery does not matter, because the receiver of the news will not take the time to learn anyway.The general issue seems to be a lack of effort on the part of us students to become informed. There is an abundance of easily accessible material on the wars, including reports from war correspondents on traditional news sites, breaking news apps, films, tweets and more. The majority expressed a desire to know more , which could easily happen if we tried.Ultimately, there is an issue that the majority of us only know basic facts. Considering the cost and significance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars both in this country and around the world, we cannot expect to become competent citizens or leaders of any sort without understanding them. We need to be able to judge them in an informed way, so that we can learn from the recent past instead of overlooking it.