Comment on "Continue Supporting our Troops in Iraq"

While I agree with Marcy on part of her conclusion, that we should continue to stay in Iraq, I myself have arrived at that conclusion from a different route of logic. But before I divulge the logic behind by conclusion, let’s first look at a brief history of United States foreign policy from World War II and onward.

Just about every American agrees that we should have gotten involved in World War II. Without our economic aid, Britain might very well have been defeated by Germany, thus greatly reducing the chances of an allied victory. But as history has revealed itself, the allies emerged victorious, but at what cost?

Everyone who lived during the 50s and afterword remembers the Cold War. However, people tend to forget one reason why the Soviet Union was such of a threat. The answer: The United States of America. “What?” you might ask. However, the fact remains true, that many of the weapons and much of the technology that we gave to the Russians during World War II was used against us during the various skirmishes during the Cold War.

However, this is not the end of the story. In order to fight Russia, we decided to use the good ‘ol American tactic of making friends with our enemies to fight the worse common enemy. The new “enemy turned friend?” Iraq. Yes, we gave military supplies and weaponry to Iraq to help them fight Russia.

You might ask yourself what is the point of this history lecture. The answer lies in the reason why I believe we should remain in Iraq; in order to clean up the mess that we made. We were the ones who gave Iraq the weapons in the first place, and we were the ones who invaded Iraq (without the approval of congress, I might add, a similarity to the conflict in Vietnam.) in the first place. Also, under the JFK administration, the United States was the one who helped Saddam Hussein rise to power.

This instance with Iraq brings about a very interesting conclusion, that of the failures of the US foreign military policy. Now before you start picking up stones, I have to relate my story of how I reached this larger conclusion.

This year, the NCFCA (National Christian Forensics and Communication Association) LD (Lincoln-Douglas) debate topic is “Resolved: That the United States of America ought to more highly value isolationism.” Before hearing some of the LD debate rounds this year, I thought much like any other American. I believed that the US was the king at military interventionism and I also believed that every time the US got involved in a foreign conflict we won and greatly helped the “nation in distress,” with the exception of Vietnam.

However, after listening to a particular LD case written by my friend Paul Hastings, I came to a very important conclusion: that the majority of the “monsters” in the world today that we are facing militarily were created by the one and only United States of America.

Just look at the current situation. We are facing a possibly future war with Iran. But whose fault is it that Iran is in its current situation. Ours. First, we tried to “encourage” Iran to become more democratic by allowing their moderately democratic leader, the shah, to fall from power, hoping that a more democratic leader would replace him. The result: the current “president” of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is in power. What about Iran’s weapons that we have come to fear? Those were given to them by…you guessed it…the United States, in order to “help” them fight Russia.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated event. What about the Cuba Missile Crisis during the Cold War? Regrettably, the United States had a hand in this affair, because it actively supported a young leader named Fidel Castro many years earlier.

You might wonder about the current situation in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, the US also played a role in this situation, since the United States actively supported a young Afghanistan leader by the name of Osama Bin Laden in his fight against the Soviets using Jihadist soldiers.

What these instances show us is that by leaving of foreign policy of military isolationism, we have caused evil to fix evil. We fought Germany by helping the Soviet Union, and we fought the Soviet Union by aiding Cuba, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

After examining this brief history of American military interventionism I hope you will agree with Marcy and me that we should remain in Iraq until we have finished cleaning up our own mess, but not indefinitely. However, the question still remains: how many more failed states will it take before the United States finally learns its lesson and stops creating monsters for it to destroy?


A commentary on the post "Continue supporting our troops in Iraq" by Marcy Winston http://fourmoreyears-winston.blogspot.com/2008/03/continue-supporting-our-troops-in-iraq.html