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Vietnam was the anti-communist war which America entered in 1950, to support South Vietnam against the communistic North. In April 1975, the communists won, when North Vietnam captured Saigon, ending the war. Over four million Vietnamese on both sides died during the war, and 58,159 American soldiers lost their lives.
Despite the massive number of fatalities, the North and South were reunified a year after the war’s end. Many politicians took enormous flack over the Vietnam War, because it of itself did little more than end many lives, disrupt many families, destroy numerous natural habitats, and cost millions of dollars.
Now President Obama is risking the same blame leveled on former American Presidents, diplomats, and other politicians, for a war which may prove just as pointless, and even more deadly.
Originally known as Operation Enduring Freedom, then-American President George W. Bush, along with support from then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, launched an all out air strike in Afghanistan in October 2001 in retaliation against the bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
The initial goal was to get Osama Bin Laden, then thought of as the key person responsible for the terrorist attacks in the States.
Originally against the American-led attacks, the United Nations eventually had to lend support, as the American-led invasions had ruined the infrastructure, leading to looting, rioting, and complete lawlessness and chaos in the already war-torn country – wars have been the one constant in Afghanistan’s history.
The United Nations created the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and began peace policing in December 2001. By July, 2009, ISAF’s numbers were at an all-time high, with over 64,500 soldiers from 42 UN countries, including a number of Canadians, Americans, and British troops.
Lawlessness and chaos still run rampant in Afghanistan, and the original mission has never been accomplished – to get Bin Laden.
Thousands of civilians and soldiers have died in Afghanistan, yet the country remains in ruins, the body bags keep piling up, and the costs to keep fighting a never-ending battle keep rising – at last count the American’s bill for the war in Afghanistan was in the trillions of dollars.
Despite all of this, current American President Barack Obama wants to continue pumping dollars and lives into this pointless, and very deadly war.
With the failure to capture Bin Laden, and terrorist attacks still taking place around the world, many already know the real reason behind America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – black gold.
Afghanistan and Iraq are home to the most oil-rich producing regions of the world, and just as in the board game Monopoly, the player who controls utilities, usually wins.
Rather than taking the money spent on destroying other nations under the guise of The War on Terror, and spending it on finding alternatives to oil, America drags her allies into a war which is really designed to bolster American’s control over the black liquid.
Ironic, because many times President Obama has spoken about reducing America’s dependence on foreign-produced oil, and talked at length of investing and supporting more environmentally-friendly American-made alternatives.
But just as politicians in the past have said one thing but done another, U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will invest in American green initiatives, while really investing in foreign-produced oil by pumping more dollars into the American-made wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
However there is one stark difference between Vietnam and America’s War on Terror. Unlike Vietnam, which managed to reconcile its differences as soon as the American’s left and the war ended with the taking of Saigon, both Afghanistan and Iraq have been so badly damaged by the American-made war, neither country is likely to mend itself after all the troops have left.
So in a sense, Afghanistan is worse than Vietnam – and much of the blame will be laid at President Obama for failing to do the right thing.
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