One thing America can agree on is war

One thing America can agree on is war

By Roger Caldwell

      It is September 2014, and America is at war. War in the dictionary is defined as a state of active armed conflict or an open armed conflict between two nations. But in 2014, there are new names for war such as counterterrorism, drone attacks, humanitarian offensive, violent assault, and military action.

With the beheading of two American journalists, President Obama and America believes that they have a sovereign right to seek, degrade, destroy, and dismantle ISIS. President Obama’s speech last week was a weak explanation on the crisis in Iraq and why America is bombing the country. After listening to the speech, it appeared that the only way to defeat ISIS is to hound every last member of the group to “the gates of Hell.”

This obviously does not make any sense, but the war hawks, the general American population, and our entire misguided political leaders are excited, because we are taking the fight to our enemies. Americans have war to unite the country around, and President Obama has the support of a bipartisan coalition in the legislature. Airstrikes will decimate communities, kill innocent civilians, and we have no idea who we are fighting in Iraq.

President Obama can stand up in front of 36 million Americans, and tell them that there is a direct threat to the United States, but that statement is simply not true. President Obama is listening to the war hawks, and they only believe that solutions to nation problems can only be fixed through war. As our president continues to develop a stronger war mentality, he is starting to sound more like President George Bush.

As America continues to bomb Iraq, it will destabilize the country and make it less secure. Americans call Iraqis who do not agree with western ideology terrorist, but the Iraqis call themselves freedom fighters. With the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, new generations of terrorist/freedom fighters were created, and they believe they should solve their own problems without western intervention.

President Obama thinks that he is saving a country, by destroying it with bombs. But airstrikes won’t destroy ISIS ideology, and Western occupation is only breeding more extremists. ISIS is not going away, because the extremist are fighting for their homeland, and the solution of destroying this organization isn’t military, but political.

If our leaders were truly thinking, they would start destroying ISIS, by cutting off access to guns and money. ISIS relies on the Black market for sales of oil, and President Obama has the capacity to block the processing of this oil on the black market. The U.S also needs to re-evaluate its arms policy, and shut down the weapons supply routes.

Bombing the country will exacerbate sectarian violence, and create a power vacuum, and ISIS can step in. There are 25 million Sunni across the Middle East and they are possible recruits for ISIS extremists. The political crisis needs a political solution and the Western countries must think outside the box.

If President Obama continues to follow the war hawks, terrorist organizations will continue to spring up and Americans will continue to be involved in a military action, and spend billions of dollars. Instead, the United States along with its allies must help heal the sectarian battles and stabilize Iraq.

There is also a need for honest and transparent negotiations with the country’s most marketable resource oil.  There is no reason that a deal cannot be created, where the west and Iraq work together to make oil the number one exporter in the world. The problems in Iraq are political, and war will destroy the country and make the problems worse.