The War on Terror warped the lives of soldiers and refugees alike

Evidence

The same War on Terror that sent a working-class white man into a war that should never have been, pushed a Najaf native from the cradle of the Middle East into the belly of the Midwest. The war that ruined a man from within led another man to build a new life afar and to give life to Iraqi American children. It was absurd, but so was the war that spawned this existential duality. In metropolitan Detroit, the place that made me, yesterday’s enemies are today’s neighbors. Both are terrorized by nightmares of death and memories of hell that haunt them while asleep and shadow them in the din of day. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 204

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: This echoes the authorial use of personal vignette bridging soldier and refugee, but the explicit point is the War on Terror’s symmetrical harm. Could connect to ‘On Sacrifice’ framing of war’s costs.