Forever in Iraq

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If you ask a civilian why we are fighting in the Middle East, they might answer with oil crisis or to fight against terrorism and to retaliate against the 9/11 attack. But is that really the case? Is there a deeper reason why we are spending massive amounts of time and money in Iraq? Is it our fault that the Middle East hates us, or is just the hatred of shallow western culture? To understand why the Middle East and the United States are not on favorable terms, we have to go back to 1947, the beginning of the Cold War. The United States was concerned with the quick growth of communism in the Eastern Bloc and attempted to restrain the growth of communism to the area behind Stalin’s Iron Curtain and no further than that. The Cold War was an indirect way for the communist influence of Russia and the capitalist influence of the United States to fight over the world in its entirety. They fought indirectly because of the appalling consequences that could come from the clash of these two gigantic superpowers with access to nuclear weapons, which was recognized by both countries.
This avoidance of direct conflict resulted in a number of proxy wars such as Afghanistan. This conflict originated in 1979 with Russia’s invasion of the region. Originally, the United States gave the Soviets a warning but did not (more than that. Eventually, they aligned themselves with a group called the Mujahideen, who despised communist ideals, to rid the country of communist influence. The struggle lasted about ten years, 1989, after which the United States distanced themselves from the Mujahideen. When the US cut the Mujahideen off, it left a bad taste in their mouths which caused hatred towards our country. After this, the United States came back with the G...

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...y 2014. .
Shanker, Thom. "With U.S. Set to Leave Afghanistan, Echoes of 1989." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Jan. 2013. Web. 05 May 2014. .
Statesmaster. "Soviet War in Afghanistan." RSS Stats. StateMaster Encyclopedia, 2005. Web. 07 May 2014. .
United States Institute of Peace. "Afghanistan: The Current Situation."United States Institute of Peace. USIP, 2014. Web. 30 May 2014. .
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Zbigniew. "The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan." Interview. CRG --. Le Nouvel Observateur, 15 Oct. 2001. Web. 14 May 2014. .

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