it all goes back to Iraq

maybe this protester has a point

by Cesar

There are many issues facing our country. There is the whole economic crisis, since there are fewer jobs and therefore no money. There is the housing crisis and the issue of inflation. People experience daily the problems of immigration and racism. There are drugs and violence in our community. Though we disagree on solutions, we can agree that these are all great problems. Is it possible that we have a bigger problem than all those things? The biggest issue facing us is the War on Terrorism.

Economic Issues Connected to the War in Iraq
You may not agree that the war is the worst problem. On our Meaningful Math blog, the War in Iraq ranked at the bottom of things the president should focus on. If you think about it, though, you can see that many of our economic and social problems stem from the War on Terror. Since we get gas from terrorist countries, we have to deal with an expensive war (bad for our economy) and out-of-control gas prices (due to a lower supply) and even inflation (as people take money out of our treasury and invest in oil). The higher gas prices lead to higher prices in just about everything else, since gas is used to transport products. Then the higher gas prices make people waste money and have less money to spend. This leads to higher consumer debt, which is why we have a housing crisis and a tightening on spending, which means companies lay people off. So then that's making everyone poor and homes are lost and the economic crisis continues.

International Issues Connected to the War in Iraq

Our country is fighting a somewhat meaningless war. We are sending our hard-working troops, but what long-term results do we have? Our troops go in there and we kill them and tell them to stop the violence and it doesn't seem to make things much better. In fact, some of our friends now see us as hypocrites. So now the people hate us and don't want us around. This makes it easier to get terrorists, which means the cycle spirals out of control.

The Middle East countries are packed with mountains and caves, so it's hard to find the hidden terrorists who are responsible. Most of the middle east now hates us anyway, terrorists or not. So, they aren't going to make it any easier for our troops. What will this mean? Another expensive surge?

Another problem is that we don't want problems with other countries. It has been six years since 9/11 and very little has happened. But are we prepared for something to happen again? Terrorists might attack our country again or they might get help from a nation like Pakistan or Iran. If that happens we will have a bigger problem. We will face huge economic problems and our military will be so stretched we can't fight a new war. But if we end it now, we might save our soldiers, save money and be prepared for a new attack.

In the end, I am not against the war. We just have to do something more productive, but since the war is not productive, why don't we end it and use our resources on things that matter? We're wasting money in other countries when we are suffering at home. We are blowing up bridges and rebuilding bridges and then we have bridges in the U.S. that are collapsing.