Iraq and Why We Shouldn’t Care
The United States is a great country and is the most powerful nation in the world. The United States has the largest navy in the world, the largest GDP, and has the most allies as well. Now with that much power and influence the United States can influence countries at a level that if looked at from a certain angle can be paramount to coercion or in simpler terms the United States can be a bully. However, it doesn’t assert its power for no reason sometimes there are atrocities being committed in some relatively unknown country or a natural disaster hits and the United States uses it vast resources to help out people in need. Nonetheless, other times under the guise of democracy and freedom for all the United States will meddle in the affairs of a country whose culture we don’t completely understand usually for some benefit to us. Recently it has been resources either a port, strategic location for a military base, or oil. In the past it had been land, imperialistic ideology, and even just to counter an opposing ideology i.e. communism vs. democracy.
The Middle East has a deep history and culture, but is mostly desert. However, they also happen to be sitting on a lot of oil which peeks our interest. Since, the decline of the British Empire no country has put together a system of colonies and governors under the control of one central government. However, the new way of doing things despite the disasters results of World War 1 is to form alliances and share resources in a mutually beneficial relationship. However, when the Middle East began to be seen a noteworthy region some of the countries didn’t have the relationship and therefore didn’t have the trust to open up with the US. Not only that but some of the countries still have a bad taste in their mouth from the British and French Colonization. I have another blog dedicated to the history of US involvement in the Middle East which will provide perspective to my conclusion.
The Reason Why We Shouldn’t Care
Now the current situation in Iraq where after we left the country it became extremely disorganized and chaos eventually broke out when an extremely radical militant group began conquering the country at a blitzkrieg pace. Certain politicians are screaming up and down that they knew this was going to happen and they told Obama it was too early to withdraw the troops. However, with that being said how long would it take to stabilize the country? How long would our troops need to be in the country? Another five years? Ten? How many billions or even trillions of dollars and soldiers’ lives is it worth to keep Iraq stable? Because that is the alternative withdraw the troops and let Iraq take care of itself or occupy it forever so it doesn’t “fall into the wrong hands.” The only reason the region stabilized was because a powerful and ruthless dictator took over and Iraq was stable and we could trade with them. However, when we decided to kill said dictator because we didn’t like him anymore we had no plan to stabilize the country other than through occupation and forcing a political philosophy frankly the country isn’t ready for on them. The reason Iraq erupted into chaos nearly immediately isn’t because we took the troops out although that was the last straw, it is because we destabilized the region in the first place.
So now to my original statement, we shouldn’t care Iraq is falling to pieces because it isn’t the job of the Unites States government to stabilize other countries when it negatively impacts American tax dollars and soldiers’ lives. Without a strong leader the region won’t be stable without direct occupation. However, since us occupying Iraq has already cost too much we simply have to cut our losses live with the mess we caused and let the Iraqi people solve their own problem because us meddling in their affairs really doesn’t help anyone.
