Many of the people I have talked to who are for the war always bring up that those against war are “uneducated about the issues.” I’m not the most informed citizen in this country, but here is what I do know about our military history. Several students have written to this paper saying that the United States has never invaded a country for the purpose of obtaining oil or for personal gain. When has the United States invaded other countries for their own benefits? How about Panama? How about the Philippines? How about Iraq for the second time?
Many students who oppose the war have said that we (yes we, you can’t separate yourself from this conflict) have not entered this war for purposes of obtaining oil. Yet, before the war even began, companies started bidding on oil supplies in Iraq. This seems somewhat suspicious to me. Granted, we are not in need of Iraqi oil. We have a big supply of oil here, and a nice pipeline deal from Saudi Arabia.
When has the United States unjustly invaded a country? In 1903 the United States helped build the Panama Canal. During this process we brought workers from other countries because we could pay them less. This resulted in altering the racial makeup of Panama. We then went on to maintain possession of the Panama Canal until 1977 when the United States signed a treaty agreeing to return custody of the canal to Panama by Dec. 31, 1999. However we conveniently invaded Panama to oust Noriega, a man that our government put into power, then put on the CIA payroll. With our government’s help, he smuggled drugs until he was no longer useful to our government. Then we decided to oust this horrible dictator. Due to the ousting of Noriega, we did not give control over to Panama.
Some of our fellow students say we are too nice. Too nice? We’re constantly invading other countries and sending troops into countries that don’t want our interference, which is what we are doing; interfering. In the April 9 edition of this paper Bridget Toth said “Just look at WWII and what we did with Japan. Not only did we kick their posteriors, but then we spent U.S. dollars to rebuild them.” How uneducated is this statement? First, we did not kick their posteriors. There was a joint effort to combat the Japanese. Secondly, there is no way that we could have kicked their posteriors, without dropping two nuclear bombs. I guess it was very “nice” of us to rebuild a country after we inflicted such horrors on people. And it wasn’t as if we dropped the bombs on military installations; they were dropped on cities! We killed children, mothers and wives, destroyed their homes and left them incapable of helping those that survived the bomb blast. Anyone that knows about nuclear weapons knows that the real damage comes from the radiation after the explosion. Those that survived the initial blasts suffered through radiation burn and horrible pain. But, it sure was nice of us to put the almighty U.S. dollar into the country.
Things didn’t stop there. During decades of U.S. military occupation, we severely altered Japanese culture. Sure they’re happy with the economic progress that they experienced during the 80s, so I guess we were overly nice. Maybe we should go back to Japan and demand interest on their current earnings.
Another popular reason we believe we must engage in this war is that we can’t allow another 9/11 to happen. Hello, what does that mean? Saddam was not responsible for 9/11. In fact we are partly to blame. We put bin Laden into power. We backed him with weapons and money. Now, he’s another ungodly terrorist that we have to take out. Why do we keep putting awful people into power, when in 20 or so years, we are forced to take them out?
Our official death toll of civilians during the Panama invasion was around 200; yet, groups in Panama and other credible countries had around 2000-4000 civilian deaths. During the first Gulf War, Colin Powell was asked about civilian deaths by a reporter. Powell was uninterested in this number. Uneducated? Maybe not the most educated, but definitely not ignorant.
