An entire generation of Americans may experience a lifetime of uninterrupted warfare. Currently, the United States is in active conflict in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, the Trans-Sahara territory, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, and more broadly the War on Terror. Since the dramatic and personal attack on the Twin Towers, the United States’ military has so aggressively sought to eliminate perpetrators of terror, it has begun to resemble its hated counterparts. Ironically, the United States has created one of the most deadly Special Forces units ever seen, and with few boundaries to hone the scope of its agenda, the recent administration has set the country on a course for perpetual warfare.

Since the start of the Korean conflict in 1950, the United States has quickly and systematically shifted from one nation to another in the name of war. After officially leaving Korea in 1953, the American military moved to Vietnam and battled there from 1953- 1975. Then only four years later the U.S. entered Afghanistan to fight the communist Russian influence, providing arms and training to the Mujahedeen, some of whom would eventually become part of the Taliban. All the while the U.S. was also engaged in several other conflicts.

These proxy wars were a part of the larger Cold War. And one could argue that engaging multiple nations in war is certainly not uncommon. However, the War on Terror is not simply the repetition of this familiar paradigm.

During the Cold War, the United States and Russia sustained political and military tension as the world’s two superpowers. This tension was fueled by their ideological differences over capitalism and democracy. Though the states never engaged the other directly in large scale combat, it has been suggested that their possession of nuclear weapons, and shared positions of power, kept them from initiating certain devastation.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia fell from superpower status, which ultimately provided the ideological precedence for the United States’ to confidently continue the campaign for global democracy.

Today, political actors on opposite sides of the aisle continue to salute this agenda. According to James Joyner, a contributor to the Atlantic, most foreign policy makers in Washington now fall into one of two camps. Liberal interventionists are focused on the security of foreign citizens, with the belief that it is our nation’s responsibility to protect those in danger from their own governments. Conservatives, on the other hand, though they fret intervention, are seduced by arguments that claim national interest would be put at risk if situations abroad spiraled out of control, and were able to eventually pose a serious security threat.

From a realist perspective, current intern for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Helen Kalla, claims this result is inevitable. She states, “As the global hegemon, we are always going to be at war with another country or dragged into a foreign war to protect our allies or interests.”

With a united ideological backing, this highly involved international campaign has also been made momentously more effective by the creation of the Joint Special Operations command under the Carter administration in 1980.

Designed as the most covert unit in the military, JSOC is the only armed division that reports directly to the White House. Recently, JSOC came under media spotlight, shortly after the release of the Oscar nominated film Dirty Wars, a documentary about America’s covert operations by investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill. Though Scahill has been a war reporter for over a decade, extensively covering the war in Iraq, by chance he was introduced to JSOC after hearing about a shooting in Gardez, Afghanistan in 2010.

The raid occurred in the middle of the night, when the Pashtun family and neighbors were in the midst of celebrating the birth of a new child. Suddenly, shots were fired into the home, killing three men and two pregnant women. None of them had any connections to the Taliban. Even worse, one of the men killed was Mohammad Doud, an American trained police officer, who had been through more than a dozen American training camps.

In the confusing aftermath, the mystery killers (later discovered to be JSOC operatives) used knives to cut out the freshly dispersed bullets from the wounded bodies. The remaining Afghan witnesses were detained and interrogated, though not allowed to wash their relatives’ blood from their hands. When they returned, all the dead had already been buried. The disturbing scene left many questions unanswered, and as Scahill dug deeper, he discovered the incident was not a lone occurrence.

According to a NATO daily press release, for three months while filming the documentary, 1700 night raids had occurred in Afghanistan, meaning instances similar to Gardez were happening 20 times every night. While considering the ripple effects such invasions would create, Scahill realized, “With 1700 raids, was anyone compiling a list of the dead?”

The hack job at Gardez vastly set back any kind of progress the U.S. had previously made in the area. Though formerly indifferent on the war, after watching him die, Doud’s brother assured Scahill the family wanted revenge. Regardless of who JSOC had intended to kill on their target list, now many more names were ready to find their way to the same list.

While the raids in Afghanistan are chilling, another terrifying reality of JSOC is their limitless jurisdiction. The unit has been given a free pass not only to act questionably in nations at war, but has also begun to kill citizens in nations of undeclared war, such as Yemen. Unfortunately, the country has been the victim of several drone attacks in the past couple years. With little to no explanation for these attacks, the killings have sparked national outrage.

According to an interview with a former JSOC insider (his identity was masked for the film), “JSOC can go wherever they please and do whatever they want to do in order to achieve the national security objectives of whichever administration happens to be in power.” To the United States, the world is a battlefield, and we are at war. And while JSOC and the current administration continue to unravel legitimate progress, as a country we must realize that if nation building and spreading democracy are our true agenda, then peace needs new weapons. Only terror begets terror.