The Afghanistan war has gone on so long that people born after 9/11 can now enlist

A day after hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center towers, tore into the Pentagon and cratered a Pennsylvania field, thousands of babies were born in the United States.

They emerged from the womb on Sept. 12, 2001, as hospital televisions were tuned to smoldering rubble, and they grew alongside the subsequent war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Wednesday marks a new era for the war in Afghanistan and the young people who make up the bulk of enlistees. It is the first day someone born after the terrorist attacks can enlist, at age 17, and begin a path to serve in the seemingly endless war launched in response to those attacks.

That is a mind-bending prospect; troops were once partially motivated to enlist because of the attacks. Now, 17 years later, the unfinished war grows further from the events that created it.

The dividing line between troops who enlisted before and after 9/11 was initially stark, veterans have said.

Brandon Friedman was commissioned in the peacetime Army of 2000 and took over an infantry platoon five days after the attacks.

He later led the platoon in Afghanistan in 2002. Those men had all enlisted before the attacks, he said, and had joined for a number of reasons — to test their mettle, earn college benefits or maybe to escape dim prospects at home.

F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11

But the replacements he received by 2003, who had all enlisted in the wake of 9/11, said they joined for different reasons.

“It was a galvanizing time,” he told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “We sort of romanticize it now, but there was a lot of unity and sense of purpose in the country and in the military.”

About 5.5 million troops have served since 9/11, and nearly 7,000 have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Kayla Williams, a former Army linguist, was in Arabic class during the attacks. Like Friedman, she later met recruits newly inspired to fight. In recent years, however, enlistees are less likely to say 9/11 played a role in their decision to join the military, said Williams, now director of the military, veterans and society program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.

Pentagon data shows an 8 percent surge in the propensity for young men to enlist right after the attacks, continuing through 2005.

Now, recruits report motivations that mirror those of their pre-9/11 forebears; they join to pursue adventure, secure benefits or are drawn to aspects of honor, she told The Post. - Read More

The Afghanistan war has gone on so long that people born after 9/11 can now enlist