According to icasualties.org there have been 6,693 American servicemen/women killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. That equals almost 31 percent of the students at NIU.

After all these years of bloodshed it seems as though there will never be peace in the Middle East. It seems like every day there’s something on the news that helps to build America’s fear of people from the Middle East as well as fear and misunderstanding toward Islam.

I can tell you from firsthand experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan that it is a false idea that peace is impossible. In fact, I learned the key ingredient for peace is not some extensive plan where there has to be a committee formed to strategize. I also learned that this ingredient will not help fill the pockets of the rich idiots who benefit from our lower class struggles. No, the key ingredient to peace in the Middle East is cultural understanding and communication.

When I was in Iraq I was tasked to be a co-interpreter for my platoon. I had attended an advanced Arabic course back in California and became very well versed in the local tongue. At first the locals had a hard time trusting me, but after being persistent and trying to get these people to talk to me I was able to develop a decent relationship with them. After a while that relationship grew to be so strong that they would give us advanced warning about ambushes and where the bad guys were. In the end, this relationship led to a decrease in violence.

Afghanistan was the same way. I learned to speak Pashto so I could continue my quest to bring peace to my area of operation. Within a short period of time I had developed great relationships with the locals and they began to cooperate with us and helped us avoid ambushes, capture enemy fighters and locate improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

It turns out the majority of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan want peace. They want to live their lives, practice their faith and provide for their families. I learned it’s a very small amount of the population that actually is part of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. And yet, with these truths being discovered by me and many other servicemen and women, the media continues to portray these people as violent savages.

While there are terrorists from the Middle East and the Islamic world, that is only a small part of their population. If we took the time to understand their ways of life and stopped trying to impose our views on them, there could be peace not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world. If I could learn this as a 19-year-old lance corporal, why can’t the government? It’s time the people running these wars realize how flawed their plans are and begin to work on a plan that not only saves lives of our servicemen, but also can have a peaceful outcome.