Sagittarius
I should be President. What an idea! But what would I do?
My high school classmate once said, "If I were President, we wouldn't be at war with Afghanistan or Iraq, and we never would have been attacked." There appears to be a lot of people who think this way, so let's first analyze exactly what the position of President is all about.
The President has to deal with the mistakes made before him, and he has four years to turn the problems around. Because his focus is on short-term as opposed to long-term, the solutions tend to be short-term. If the solution is long-term, the President is often seen as unpopular and ignoring the "voice of the people," even though he may be doing what's in the best interest of the nation.
The same situation has applied to wars with Afghanistan and Iraq. We gave the people of Afghanistan weapons and trained them so that, in the short-term, they could defeat the Soviet Union. Long-term, this was not wise, but it was popular with Americans, which got the politicians votes. The result was that we never helped establish a government in Afghanistan; we never helped the people get back on their feet, so they were forced to turn to the only people who could. The problem was, and is, that those people were the people with weapons, who were trained to fight, not to lead a nation, but they were the ones with the resources to take care of the people. So, they became the leaders.
The people of Afghanistan generally didn't like Americans anyway, because the United States supported Israel, a nation that rose out of the dust of a civil war between Jews, fleeing from Europe, and Palestinians, who had lived there for over a thousand years.
COMMENTS (3)
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Comments
Rayan,I am an Afghan and
By Afghan, February 8, 2007 at 21:30Rayan,
I am an Afghan. America had not only trained our people for war against Soviet Union but also invaded us and destroyed our country and our way of life. But I understand your vision and way of thought and completely agree with you. If I were President, I would do the same as Bush did in 2001. The fundamental sin of Americans and Europeans is that they provided our people weapons and then left them after they had reached their goal. They left us on the mercy of the Mullahs and terrorists who subsequently attacked America, because they were addicted to war, they had weapons and they had nothing else to do. So this war had been started by America and its allies and they have to finish it. There is a Pashto poem which says:
"You have started the hatred and you have to pay for it".
Good time for you
Zalmay Basharyar
Enemy of the terrorists and a secular Afghan
Zalmay, I agree with all of
By Web Stailey, February 10, 2007 at 07:03Zalmay, I agree with all of that. The US should have stayed in Afghanistan and helped the Afghan people rebuild their nation. We screwed up. And President Bush inhereted many mistakes from many former Presidents, including this one. It wasn't him who abandoned Afghanistan when the Soviets left. But he's the one who had to deal with the consequences of those actions. And when it comes to Iraq, although I hated going into Iraq, and I hate war, I know that if we do not stay, if we do not help the Iraqi people rebuild, we're going to have the same regrettable results we had in 2001, but those results may not come until 2020, or even later. But for the long-term effects, sadly, we need to stay in Iraq.
Thanks,
Ryan
Hi Ryan, A well-written,
By Heather Wallace, February 8, 2007 at 09:35Hi Ryan,
A well-written, well-thought-out piece. You are the first person to submit your presidential vision, so I hope that starts to get the ball rolling.
Do other people see the world the way Ryan does? I wonder how others may do things differently. E-mail your idea to heather@orato.com.
I think it's unfortunate that presidents have to spend so much of their energy on wars when what the world needs is environmental initiatives and progressive thinking. Personally, I think all wars and all reactive measures can only breed more wars. Martin Luther King said "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." It's sad that people and society are so jaded that such a fundamental truth seems like a pipe dream, when in fact it is the only truth that can lead us out of this mess.
Heather Wallace
Senior Editor