The Civil War and the War in Afghanistan and the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq - Admission/Application Essay Example

 Abstract Wars are fought for various reasons and no one can deny the fact that they end up taking many lives. America has participated in many wars historically. Civil war, Vietnam War, War in Afghanistan and Iraq war are some wars in which, America took part. War in Afghanistan and Iraq war are the two earlier wars while Civil War and Vietnam are older ones. Civil War and War in Afghanistan were fought in order to end oppression. Afghanis were considered to be oppressed by Taliban due to which, Afghan War took place while in Civil War, Blacks were considered to be oppressed. Vietnam War and Iraq War were fought because there were wrong claims about Vietnam and Iraq. Many people died in all four wars. Wars in the history make people to consider the issue of wars morally. Morally wars are wrong and affect the human existence to a great extent in negative terms. From the fought wars, we learn to follow strategies that can be less abusive for a country’s military and ways to avoid wars. The history of American wars is long and complex. When one looks back over the expanse of time, it may seem painfully obvious to the viewer, in hindsight, what kind of similarities and differences can be seen between certain wars. For our purpose, the American wars that will be compared here will be two former wars and two current wars. The two former wars that will be evaluated and contrasted will be the Civil War to the war in Afghanistan, and the Vietnam War to the Iraq war. Throughout, it will be discussed how these wars provide the opportunity for moral contemplation and what some of the lessons are, if any, that can be learned through a dissection of these wars’ impact. The comparison-contrast of the Civil War and the war in Afghanistan is an interesting one. The Civil War was a battle of a society divided and the power of division was personified in Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s most famous question was answered by America’s most famous answer: The Civil War. His question was, “Can we as a nation, continue together permanently forever half slave, half Free?” Just as Blacks were being oppressed in the Civil War, Afghanis are being oppressed by the Taliban, which the U.S. is now trying to defeat. A strict group known as the Taliban came and took over Afghanistan in 1996. Aside from this invasion, the Taliban also launched an attack on the USA’s twin towers on September 11th, 2001. The leader of this group, Osama Bin Laden, is believed to be hidden in Afghanistan, and the U.S. Government is doing all they can to bring justice to the Taliban and Bin Laden for all the trouble they have caused internationally. The Taliban came to Afghanistan and corrupted the lives of its people, especially the women. The Taliban have created many unfair laws that control the people of Afghanistan. First off, it is very difficult for anyone to enter or exit the country. The secret religious police, the ministry of vice and virtue, is the most feared part of the Taliban as, it is they who are most harmful to the people of Afghanistan. It is illegal to go against the government, and could result in death to the offender. Slavery, very similar to the oppression of the people of Afghanistan, was the main foundation of the Civil War. Like the Blacks being oppressed during the Civil War, the Afghani people do not have much freedom at all either. Although, the Taliban say they have brought law to the people of Afghanistan, they in reality brought fear and horror to the Afghanis. Women are treated as if they are not equal and for this reason they have even less freedom than the men do, whatever little that may be. They are not allowed to work outside their houses, and have no right to health care. This is the cause for the fact that a large percent of the women do not make it through childbirth. Make-up is forbidden to be worn, although some women still wear it. Girls 12 and older are not allowed to go to school, although they have rebelled. This was not the best idea however, as many of them were sentenced to death. Women are treated in the worst way, and many attempts to revolt against the Taliban have ended in a most unfortunate manner. The Taliban feel they must have complete control over Afghanistan’s society. The people of Afghanistan are extremely restricted in what they are allowed to do in general. When the Civil War finally ended around April 1865, the South was devastated. Similarly, the Afghani people were devastated after the war in their own country. However, unlike Reconstruction in the Civil War, the Afghanis had no form of reconstruction. Buildings destroyed during the war in Afghanistan were left in shambles, and no new buildings were permitted to be constructed. In the Civil War, even with Reconstruction, whites were in a population minority yet had advantages over the Blacks such as money, political power, property and that they used to their full advantage to manipulate the new laws to fit the Constitution yet limit Black participation in society.1 Blacks still suffered injustices, some at the hands of white terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Similarly, like the Ku Klux Klan, the Taliban have attempted to create a society in which, the people have no freedom or rights in order to maintain control.2 The Taliban have entered Afghanistan and devastated the lives of the Afghanis, while also altering the country as a whole. They have stripped the people of their rights and freedoms, and made it fact that the country is run and commanded strictly by what the government says. The weight of the Civil War rested on Lincoln, in retrospect--but the build-up was a century of division, compromise, hatred and political mistakes. In a way, this mirrors the hopes people have weighted on the shoulders of our current President, Barrack Obama, to make Afghanistan and the world safer places for all to live. From a moral standpoint, one must see that the struggles of the Blacks in Civil War-era U.S. and the Afghanis today are what drove these respective wars. Secondly, one must compare the Vietnam War with the Iraq war. During the Cold War, people were obsessed with who might have been Communists. The nation was so worried about spies, or “commies,” that there was a group of people to find out who were Communists by interrogating them--a group called the HUAC. Often people lost their livelihood or their lives, just because of their heritage. As time passed, everyone was suspicious even of his or her own family members. America could not let Communism spread; Americans were supposed to believe in democracy and capitalism. Similarly, President George W. Bush became obsessed with “the war on terror” and with the idea that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, like in the Vietnam conflict--which started with the innocent Gulf of Tonkin incident—another false claim (non-existent weapons of mass destruction) served as a carte-blanche excuse for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq. What kept the United States from getting out of Vietnam? The United States saw the problem of Communism within the prism of the domino effect theory--that if Indochina became Communist, then it would spread to other nations. The fate of the whole free world depended on the survival of Indochina. The “evil” of communism was spreading everywhere, and the forces of democracy had to take a stand.3 Similarly, Pres. George W. Bush saw the war in Iraq as key to stopping terrorism caused by radical Islamic jihadists, the likes of which were demonstrated on Sept. 11, 2001, with the bombing of the World Trade Center towers in New York—as mentioned previously. At this time of the Vietnam War, John F. Kennedy was President of the United States. In mid-1963, the numbers of American troops were approaching 15,000 people, right before Kennedy was assassinated. By 1966, the war was taking its toll on the American forces and the American public. Lyndon B. Johnson was worried and confused; he knew that southern Vietnam was losing and he could not get out. Even though Westmoreland, who was in Vietnam, kept reporting victories. Westmoreland knew that to achieve a victory he anticipated it would take five years, and that the North was much more determined. Similarly, in the war in Iraq, there has been a troop surge in order to help the war effort improve, but in reality, there has been evidence that Pres. Bush lied to the American people about how the war was going. In Vietnam, American ideas such as Manifest Destiny and the belief that it is America’s right to conquer the land, are the same factors that were driving the United States during World War I which got us involved in Vietnam, including imperialism. Similarly, an isolationist policy, by going into the Iraq war without consulting the international community, was also an imperialist technique. In Vietnam, America’s obsession with Communism also played a major part of the picture. The anti-Communist movement swept the nation; Americans were indoctrinated to believe that the only way a nation should be was democratic. Just as in World War I, America still believed in Woodrow Wilson’s ideas and wanted to “make the world safe for democracy.”4 The reasoning that the United States was using was that the only way for Vietnam to be a safe nation would be for it to adopt the ways of the United States, and become a democratic and free nation. Similarly, Pres. Bush became focused on the fact that Iraq must and should become a democratic nation, and that pulling out of Iraq would constitute a failure to promote that policy. One reason that the United States did not want Vietnam to become a Communist nation was because the United States was trading with France because of their rubber industry. The United States did not want to lose their source of rubber. Similarly, the United States became involved in the Iraq war because of its vested interest in Iraq as a nation rich in oil, which is a resource that the U.S. depends on for its day-to-day survival. In the United States, the fear of the spread of Communist expansion became paranoia in the Vietnam era, as did the war on terror with Pres. George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. In the Vietnam War, often President John F. Kennedy wanted to pull our troops out, but did not know how. He said that to withdraw would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam but also of Southeast Asia. As a result, America was going to stay there. The same claim was made of Bush about Iraq—that the Iraq would collapse without U.S. troop support. Another reason that kept us from getting out of Vietnam was what President Nixon stated about how we cannot have a blanket withdrawal because of the United States’ need to maintain “American credibility” around the world.5 America’s belief in imperialism got in the way of good judgment. Similarly, Bush believed that we should “stay the course” or else look like fools for giving up the “war on terror.” After the loss of 58,175 American lives in Vietnam, do we still really know the reason why we even entered in the first place? To contrast, in the Iraq war, about a tenth of the lives that were lost in the Vietnam War have been claimed. When will the madness end? The comparison and contrast between the Civil War and the war in Afghanistan, and the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq, respectively, are obvious. However, one cannot take for granted the numerous people who have died fighting for the greatness that is the United States—whether it is for the enslaved Blacks or oppressed Afghanis. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq are stunning when compared. We hope to learn from these tragedies. Wars provide us terrain for moral contemplation. From the fought wars, people learn to follow ways by which, they can control the affects of wars and also wars wholly. Wars affect the lives of people due to which, people have to face the issue of moral scruples as well as the lives of millions of people are endangered. Wars teach us to adopt peaceful ways to find a solution to a problem. Works Cited Cantwell, J. A Brave New World. USA: Nelson Publishing, 1994. Civil War History Page, Retrieved 19 Feb 2009, Premier Internet, www.civilwar.com. Commager, H. Documents of American History 9th Edition. USA: Publisher Unknown, 1973. Cooke, A. America. UK: BBC publishing, 1973. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, Lincoln Timeline, Retrieved 19 February 2009, Oxford University Press, http://www.lincolnbicentennial.gov/timeline-new.html. Read More