Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Daily Lobo The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
Latest Issue
Read our print edition on Issuu
Student Andy Lilienthal, who served in the U.S. Army during the invasion of Iraq, sits by the Duck Pond on Wednesday.
Student Andy Lilienthal, who served in the U.S. Army during the invasion of Iraq, sits by the Duck Pond on Wednesday.

Student vets react to Afghanistan surge

Andy Lilienthal was at ease as he sat near the Duck Pond on Wednesday afternoon. He even cracked a few jokes about his smile.

But Lilienthal's tone quickly changed once the former U.S. Army sergeant began telling his story about his time in Iraq, where he spent just less than a year.

From November of 2003 to the end of October 2004, he was among the first soldiers to enter the country.

Lilienthal said the level of danger he encountered was different every day. The opposition was unpredictable.

"It's not a traditional war, not one that you're necessarily trained for, because there are no solid battle lines.. You can't track enemy movements. You can't even really prepare for when you're being attacked," Lilienthal said. "You can only react to when you're being attacked."

But military attention has recently shifted away from Iraq to focus on growing instability in Afghanistan, where fighting began in 2001.

Enjoy what you're reading?
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Subscribe

Last week, President Obama said several thousand more troops need to be sent to Afghanistan in the coming months in order to stabilize the region. However, he plans to leave about 50,000 U.S troops in Iraq.

Darrin Kowitz, one of the founders of Student Veterans of UNM, said that while Obama and his administration seem to have a different take on the conflicts overseas than the Bush Administration did, they are still going to run into speed bumps in their plans.

Obama ordered that 17,000 U.S soldiers will join with forces already occupying Afghanistan, bringing the total to around 30,000.

Student Eric Ross, who served for 6 1/2 years in the Marine Corps, was a part of the invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq. He said he noticed a marked difference in violence between the two countries.

Ross said that when he and his fellow soldiers first landed in Afghanistan, they were under hostile conditions regularly, but it was not long before the insurgency weakened and U.S forces took control of the region.

On the other hand, Ross said, when he first arrived in Iraq with much clearer objectives, he and U.S forces received continuous resistance all the way up to Baghdad.

Kowitz said the U.S will have to do more than build up troops in order to bring stability to a region that is anything but welcoming of the Western democratic.

"I think that we are going to have to focus more on a mission of training native Afghanis to form and take charge of their own government," Kowitz said. "We have to train them and hope that something a bit more organic develops out of that."

Comments
Powered by SNworks Solutions by The State News
All Content © 2024 The Daily Lobo