Yaolee Chen

English 101

Research Paper (MLA)

Glenn Simshaw

The Causes of the War in Afghanistan

What threats to our national security the most was the Congress itself. As we often heard from the media that the US was arresting a terrorist, whose name was Osama Bin Laden in the name of a self-defense, the whole story was but an episode. The decision of the Congress to war had made in Clinton’s administration. The damages of the World Trade Center cost the Americans 10 million US dollars. Since the war declared to Afghanistan, the US had spent more than 100 billion dollars on the war by the end of 2002 (McCoy). One must ask what causes the Congress to make such a stupid idea to have war with Afghanistan. My hypothesis was that the Congress had made a mistake. Because of the economic depression in the late 1990s, the Congress thought the war might be a good idea to end the economic depression; the Congress today had the power to war without the consent from its American people, and the Congress was a thread to the US security.

The political parties had begun to lost their functions in Clinton’s Administration, the Republicans and the Democratic didn’t talk to each other in the Congress (Broder), and the members of the both parties hated each other (Brownstein). Whenever the President Clinton had to make a decision for the US foreign policy, he had to find the information from the publication like Washington Post and Foreign Affair because the President Clinton found himself had no one to talk with for help (Morris). The media played a major role to direct the decision making for the presidents in the White House. In a word, the political system in the Congress had corrupted since the late 1990s (Patterson), and the corruption continued to the administration of President Bush Jr. in the late 2001. The United States became “lacked steadiness and [lacked] political will” (News Conference by President Clinton) to secure the oil interest in the Middle East with the European countries. Some lazy Congressmen ignored the issues and avoided their duties purposely (A Return to Isolationism). What made the corruption worse was that too much old people occupied the offices for too long—Benjamin Gilman, Floyd Spences, Jesse Helms, and Strom Thurmond—have an average age of eighty (Lake 255). The officers of aged believed that the best way to maintain the US power and influence in the world was to create the “wars” (A Return to Isolationism); and they don’t leave their offices (Around the World, Dismay over Senate Vote on Treaty), they just preached the same old assertion at the time of voting for an important foreign policy.

Because of the parties’ failure, the American economy also got into trouble. The widening gaps between the rich and poor had impelled the middle class Americans to become poor and poor. The American middle-class, like teachers, nurse, firemen, policemen, were not able to afford their children to go to the colleges or the universities in the late 1990s. The reason was that only 1% of the American rich held 95% of the American money. In another word, the 99% of the American common people, like most of you and me, owned the only 5% of the American money. A 4-years-college student, in average in 1994, owned the federal government 8,000 dollars before he or she could graduate. A full-time university professor was paid only 3,000 dollars around a month. The American people in general were getting poor and poor. The Congress was supposed to arrange the new economic policies to make equal the economic distribution to everybody in the American society (Lake 289). Today, the new economic policy President Bush has found was to open the economic resources in the Middle East. A study showed that Afghanistan served the US as a place for the oil transit to connect the oil from Caspian Sea to Persian Gulf (Tanter). And by April 2002, the US had greatly depended on the oil imports from Iraq. The easiest way to improve the US economy was to use violence in order to get the oil in the Middle East. (Politics Brief).

So, how could the war be created? In May 2001, the US suited the president of Afghanistan Oma, a despot. The US accused the political of Afghanistan was an out-date-dynasty in the courts of the United Nation < http://www.unesco/general/eng/whatsnew.org May, 2001>. I had read an article from my e-mail in May 2001, also, talking about the women of Afghanistan had been ill-treated by their traditional culture.

Increasing articles speaking about the evils of the foreign countries in the publications in the late 1990s. They often portrayed the foreigners as the carriers of the diseases. The following articles were about the foreigners spreading out terrible virus throughout the international airports:

With some two million people crossing an international border every day—and 115.5 million visitors to the United States in 1996 alone—it is harder to shield and sequester ourselves from dangerous infectious diseases. Any time, anywhere that anyone travels, invisible germs tag alone. AIDs, which originated in Africa, became the number-one killer of American men aged fifteen to forty-five. Mosquitoes capable of carrying dengue fever, viral encephalitis, and yellow fever journeyed to the United States in 1985 on tires imported from Asia. (Global Trade and Travel Import Health Threats, Report Warns)

Another article written in the Foreign Affairs said, “Airport malaria has entered the annals of public-health problems, as travelers pick up and take home diseases like gift shop souvenirs” (Garrett). Infectious disease expert Laurie Garrett points out “Even before commercial air travel, swine flu in 1918-1919 managed to circumnavigate the planet five times in 18 months, killing 22 million people, 500,000 in the United States". Articles like these often caused the feeling of the anti-foreigners in America. The publication reported what they shouldn’t do to the American public.

Yet, the media failed to report what it should do to the public. National and International News were the essential function that the media could do to the public. Yet, today, we don’t hear much about wars from the TV or from the newspapers. The easiest way to make the war to fight successfully was by not telling the American people because once the people were told, they would do the protests, ask the president to veto it, to restrict the power of Congress, and to make the wars preventable, or to hinder the Congress to wars. The Congressmen and the Congresswomen in general believed that American citizens could not make the right decision for the political issue (The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). So, the Congress men and women discouraged the American public to participate to the political issues; wars particularly. A report showed that most of the Americans learned the news from the TV. The media, since the Vietnam War in the 1970s, had purposely cut the 50 minutes of the news report into 15 minutes, as a psychological testing showed that a 15 minutes report for the adults would not cause a long-term memory in their brains (Ignatius). As most of he Americans were eating or doing others, while watching TVs or listening to the radios, the important international news would be gone out of their brains forever in just a few days if the news did not bother their daily activities; and the Middle East issues became the disconnected stories to the majority of the American people.

As the Congress had decided to war, the US weapons were getting even more destructive. It was a global trend. If we did not improve our weapons, the other countries would, which did not sign the peace treaty with the UN (A Damaging Arms Control Defeat). Unavoidably, the US had to create some powerful weapons in order to win the war (American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy 1999). The Congress did not care how much fighters might be killed by the wars. Surveys showed in May 1999, the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that if NATO understood a more extensive operation in Kosovo and American troops were killed, only a minority would want to end the operation, while most would want to persist and would even favor “beefing up forces or striking back hard” (New Kosovo Study Finds Public Shows More Tolerance of Possible Fatalities Than Assumed) The greater battle was going to extend beyond the country Afghanistan. Once the expansive war began, there was no safety for every single American citizen, including our lives and our properties because there was no way to guarantee that the US must win the wars. Therefore, the Congress was planning a scheme threatening to the American security.

Finally, the Congress had used the United Nation to run for the US oil interests. “No new UN peace operations were approved from 1978 to 1988” (Hillen). But, in the 1990s, The US had increasingly sending military force in the United Nation in the name of peacekeeping (Holt 12). President Bush, the senior, clearly saw the United Nations’ potential to advance American interests. He pledged to “explore new days to ensured adequate American financial support for UN peacekeeping” (Holt 13). Presidents Bush Senior and Clinton both have recognized that peacekeeping efforts serve our interests and respond to the best instincts of the American people. Yet, the money we spent on the UN troops was still cheap, in 1999, about “the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks,” which was less than $1.22 per U.S. citizen (The United Nations) The UN was, therefore, holding a slavery folder and calling for the nations to run on the direction of the US interests: “Trade will continue, with less rather than more regulation thanks to the delay Seattle brought about. Fewer rules will mean more power to the already powerful, at the expense of poorer nations” (Impasse on Trade Delivers a Stinging Blow to Clinton).

As the greatest power in the world, I believe the US has alternative choice to change the global economic depression today. While the war began on October 7^th, 2001, 90% of the soldier in Afghanistan had no idea what on earth they were fighting about. Because 90% of the soldier never had a chance to read or write a word in their lives, they just followed the orders and they took up the weapons, and they went ahead and fought. The US might help them on the fields like poverty, education, and health care. Mainly, the people of Afghanistan wanted to maintain their traditional culture. And the war for them was to resist the absorption by the superpowers, not really a war that the people of Afghanistan and the US soldiers had to fight for. I think the Congress had made a mistake. Because of the war, the US economy is now getting poor.

. The threat to the US security began from the division of the Republicans and the Democratic that it failed to give the presidents good advices. And because of the economic depression less and less Americans participated to the political issues (Hoge). The media also failed its job to provide the correct information for the Americans. TV also failed its function to connect the Middle East problems into the American home each and every single night. Yet, it used “sequential hysteria” psychology to make the audiences learn nothing from watching the news. The US has equipped itself with strong military forces and have gained the supports from the UN to run for the globe wars today. What really threatened to the US security was not a single terrorist Osama Bin Laden, but it was the idea of the wars that came from the US Congressmen and the Congresswomen. How to restrict the power of the Congress was the essential step for the national security today.

Works Cites

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