Most of the Americans killed in the Kabul bombing were 9/11 babies who never knew a nation at peace

They had signed up to do their part, to heal a country — their own — that had not known a moment of peace in their entire lives. Rylee McCollum wanted to become a history teacher, but only after doing what he could as a Marine to serve his country. Hunter Lopez knew this was what he wanted since he was 11 years old. Ryan Knauss knew it in second grade.

The 13 American service members killed in Kabul on Thursday died in gruesome violence, victims of a terrorist bombing. They were, with one exception, 9/11 babies, born within a few years of the terrorist attacks that led the United States into a military conflict that stretched across four presidencies and throughout the lives of these 11 men and two women.

They never knew a United States that was not at war, never lived in the world before the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, a country without ID checks in office buildings, metal detectors at schools, shoes X-rayed at the airport.

Instead, they grew up keenly conscious of security concerns, in a culture now sometimes fixated on safety, always aware of a war on terrorism that men and women in uniform were fighting thousands of miles from home.