What we haven't learned from endless war

In this photograph taken on January 3, 2018, Afghan commandos forces patrol during ongoing US-Afghan military operation against Islamic State militants in Achin district of Nangarhar province. Afghan security forces are conducting most of the fighting against the Taliban and other insurgent groups as US troops operate alongside them in a training capacity and are frequently on the front lines. NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP via Getty Images

When I urge my writing students to juice up their stories, I tell them about "disruptive technologies," inventions and concepts that end up irrevocably changing industries. Think: iPhones, personal computers, or to reach deep into history, steamships. It's the tech version of what we used to call a paradigm shift. (President Biden likes to refer to it as an inflection point.) 

Certain events function that way, too. After they occur, it's impossible to go back to how things were: World War II for one generation, the Vietnam War for another and 9/11 for a third. Tell me it isn't hard now to remember what it was like to catch a flight without schlepping down roped-off chutes like cattle to the slaughter, even if for most of the history of air travel, no one worried about underwear bombers or explosive baby formula. Of course, once upon a time, we weren't incessantly at war either.