When Danny Affaltar was a senior at Lawrence High in 2001, he had his plan for the future: attend Kansas State University and become an architect.

But after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, thwarted attack on the Capitol, and the breakout of the War on Terror, Affaltar, son of LHS registrar Diannia Affaltar, knew there would be a war and his life altered. He decided to enlist in the US military.

“When I heard of the war, I was excited because we were going to get those [people] that did horrible things to our country,” Affalter said. “The military has always been something that I wanted to do.”

Danny Affaltar has been on two tours, the first from December 2005 to December 2006 and the second from March 2008 to April 2009.

For his first deployment, he was in northern Baghdad. The second was in downtown Baghdad.

Bookkeeper Amy Flohrschutz’s son, Levi Flohrschutz, is also in training to be in the military, specifically as a Marine.

Because they have a close connection to the war, families like Affaltar’s and Flohrshutz’s are constantly thinking about the war.

“[I think about it every day] because my son will graduate [from his training] in December, and chances are that he will get deployed, so I think about it every day,” Flohrschutz said.

For current high school students, the War on Terror has held a constant presence since their early elementary school years. Because today’s teenagers were so young when this war began, many can’t remember a time without it. Seniors, for example, were in first grade when the attacks occurred, with some watching footage of the attacks at school.

But more than 11 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, national support for war efforts is waning.

According to a CBS News poll conducted in March 2012, 69 percent of Americans polled thought that the United States should no longer be involved in Afghanistan. The percentage of people who thought the United States was doing the right thing fighting in Afghanistan was 23 percent.

This number marked the lowest approval rating recorded by CBS News since the war began.

“I think it could have been avoided,” junior Garrett Girard said. “I don’t think it was something we needed to get involved with.”

Despite opposition and indifference to the war, it is still very much real. According to Diannia Affaltar, not every aspect of this war is a negative and people need to work focus on the good things happening in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I think that there’s a lot of good out there, and we just don’t see it,” said Diannia Affaltar, whose daughter, Sarah, is in the Air Force. “There’s good out of all of our soldiers being over there. [It’s] not just a negative thing.”

More than a decade of war has shown the country that it’s not “invincible,” but soldiers still have an important role to play, Flohrschutz said.

“I think they have [accomplished their mission but] I think there’s still work to be done,” Flohrschutz said.