|
|
War, Oil and the future without Middle EastApr 02 '03 (Updated Oct 05 '06) Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Books
The Bottom Line There is a way without guns. Bush just doesn't understand. Is Clinton just lucky or he is really smart to avoid any war in his term?
As a naturalized citizen who lived half of the life in a communist country and another half in a democratic environment, I have observed two extreme different life styles. I am very happy that I can spend the rest of my life in latter one. When I was young, I grew up thinking United States is the enemy and her people were abused and slaved by a few capitalists’ pigs. Living in this county has changed my view, yet I began to understand why so many in the world hate us. We are a proud nation. We live a good life in a democratic way that everyone has a voice, which can be heard. (There are not too many governments in the world allow their citizens to criticize or even ridicule them without going to jail.) We firmly believe this life and are willing to do anything to protect the way we live. We treasure our freedom; we believe in our Constitutions; we expect the best. Because we believe in it so much for so long that we think this is the way life suppose to be. Our life may not be the only life, but the BEST. If we were only a believer, we wouldn’t be hated by half the nations around the world. We take actions. We go out and help those troubled nations when they dire in need of assistance. Furthermore, we go out and help those people who were not dare to stand up to their government by way of CIA. Then if all else failed, we are willing to use our arm forces to secure a “best life” for those poor, suffering people. We ask nothing in return. However, what we get is the hatred towards us from the people whom our soldiers died to help. Although our intention is great, I think our government has forgotten a critical issue when they send our soldiers abroad to fight a war in another nation: we are foreigners to others. No matter how good our intentions are, when we kill civilians accidentally, it wipes out all the good deeds we have done. People remember the bad far easier than the good. Even when we kill a villain, there will be rumors that the person is innocent. People will believe their own before they listen to any foreigner. Think about it, in times of war, do you believe our media or the enemies? That is right. We are the enemy in many people’s eyes. After an incident, which US soldiers killed 10 women and children when they failed to stop at a checkpoint, a day after four soldiers killed when a suicide bomber blow up a taxi at another checkpoint, Rumsfeld said that Saddam Hussein has killed far more innocent people than this. What he and our government failed to understand is that it is not about how many people Saddam Hussein has killed; it is about how many civilians we killed. A civilian killed by us is far more important in the eyes of Iraqi people than a thousand Saddam had killed. It is because we are foreigners. During the Starling era, he killed more Russians than the German did. But people still rallied behind him and died for him. Not for him really, they died for their county. But that is exactly the point. Even in a dictatorship, people still will fight for their country although the “enemy” is coming to the rescue. Why do we do it? It is not like this is the first time we do such things. We had Bosnia; we had Somalia; we had Vietnam. In each case, we left with a nation that full of hatred towards United States. Why do we target Iraq? Perhaps we go to rescue the suffering Iraqi people, or to uproot the terrorist operation. I think we go there because of oil and Bush’s personal revenge. There are other countries (North Korea for example) that have ruthless regime, but we don’t send troops there. And there are many terror camps around the world, but no US military present in their country. The reason is those country don’t have the world second largest oil reserve. Furthermore, they didn’t invade their neighbor and still remain in power. Bush Jr. is doing what his father didn’t do: secure the oil reserve and take out Saddam Hussein. Do we have to send our love ones to fight this war? Let me make a bold assumption. Take oil out of the equation. If United States doesn’t rely on foreign oil, do we really care about Middle East? I don’t think so. The Middle East policy is nothing but an oil policy. We can care less if there is any oil there. Do we care about Africa? NO! There are a lot of people suffering there. But I don’t see our government send special envoy to Africa every few month. Because there is NO oil, we don’t care. So if there were no oil, would we care if Iraq invaded Kuwait? NO. However, what was done is done. Saddam still got away with invading Kuwait and continue enjoying his power. How can we prevent something like that happening again? Stop caring about oil! We must find alternative energy resource so we don’t need them. Bush just asked for $75 Billion for a month of operation. That doesn’t include the money already spend to deploy 200,000 forces in the pass 6 month. It is already 2 weeks into the war and we are not even close. Some expert estimate it would cost $200 Billion and up to $1.5 Trillion. That is a lot of dough. Recently Bush announced a budget of $2.9 Billion funding for fuel cell research for the next 5 years. The prediction is that by 2020, we will have cheap, clean fuel cell cars. I wonder if Bush increases that budget by 10 times, how fast can we have those cars? What about 100 times? Money can make things happen fast. Remember Manhattan Project? In 4 short years, from just a few ideas on papers, United States became the world first nuclear power. Fuel cell is a technology that is working. Scientists are researching to make it smaller and cheaper to produce so it can be used in an automobile. I firmly believe that if we spend more money into research, we can speed up by many folds. Currently we import 55% of oil. If we can cut our oil consumption by half in the next few years, we can forget Middle East. I can imagine the life with it. It would be calm and peaceful. Wait, I saved the best for last. No oil, no money! By not buying oil from these countries, we stop making them rich. And No money, no terror! Stop the money supply and terrorist are like fish out of the pond. All these won’t happen immediately. I am willing to wait a few years of turmoil for lasting peace. Although one of our goals of the war is to free Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, deep down, we all know that the major reason is oil. As long as we dependent on others for fuel, there will be more conflicts to drag us in. The more conflicts, the more people will hate us. They are different from us. We can’t just march in and tell them democracy is life for all people. The solution is to stay away from them. We can still be the leader of the world yet not to be a police.  |
| Write the first comment on this review! |
|
Ads by Google
|
