Babysitter for Hire

While on the Washington Post’s web site, I found an interesting letter to the president from June of 2007 about what the writer believes the US’s role in Iraq should be. Although it is outdated, I thought it brought up some interesting points and relates heavily to our new unit about war. The topic about whether or not the US should be in Iraq and what their role there should be has been debated heavily over the past couple of years. In class last week when we were looking at political cartoons, one stuck out to me that reminded me of this exact issue. The cartoon had Uncle Sam holding up Cuba, the Philippians, and some other countries we were taking care of after a war (in the form of babies) like he was babysitting them. The caption of the cartoon read along the lines of “how some people view America’s role in other countries after the war”. I found this very interesting that America was being portrayed as the babysitter and thought that this was how many people viewed America now with Iraq. We have gone in and freed them from Saddam Hussein and are still there, helping them create a stable country. If we pull out immediately, all of our work and lives lost will go for nothing, yet we can’t babysit them forever. There needs to be a solution in between. I thought this article presented the problem perfectly saying America has lived by the motto “you break it, you own” and that shouldn’t always be the case yet also realizes that abandoning Iraq suddenly is unrealistic too. The writer’s solution was “a limited deliberate drawdown of our military men and women and a redeployment of the forces remaining in the region to areas where they can more efficiently and effectively carry out a clearly defined mission”. I thought this was interesting, and in a way being done today. This is one of many opinion pieces I have read about US’s involvement in Iraq, and thought that this was one of the more interesting ones, and thought I would share it because it relates a lot with our new unit.