Resolved: The US Ought to Aid Ukraine Militarily

I’ll split my thoughts into three key points. First point: Historical proof that military interventions do more harm than good – and that most were part of larger, more selfish plans. For, as Michael Crichton said, if you don’t know your history, you are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. There are numerous examples in even our brief period of U. S. history that show us that military interventions just cause more chaos. However, for now I’ll bring to your attention the Afghanistan war, but not our turn in Afghanistan, rather the Soviets, from 1979 – 1989. The Soviets went to war by using much the same logic we used later, in 2001. They attacked to destroy insurgents that were stirring up trouble, that is, the Peshawar Seven and the Tehran Eight. Both groups housed smaller groups within them, but as a whole, they comprised a unit called the Mujahedeen. We supported the Mujahedeen in Operation Cyclone, this fact is not controversial and should not be treated as such. This Operation gave these militant Extremist Muslims around $26 Million every year and by 1987 around $630 Million yearly. We supported them because we assumed that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, like we are doing in the Ukraine. Aside from money, we gave them high-tech stinger missiles, military training, and military intelligence. A short time after the Soviets left, America cut off most of its financial aid, both for military and for refugees. We assumed that our mission was complete in Afghanistan, but we were obviously quite wrong. Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto told Pres. George H. W. Bush “You are creating a Frankenstein”, and he was right. In supporting the Mujahedeen, we supported leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was friendly with al Qaida and Osama bin Laden. A large part of the Mujahedeen went on to become the Taliban, and in part, this funding was responsible for 9/11. We funded them, and we paid for it. We invaded in 2001, and have spent almost $500 Billion and lost tens of thousands of lives. (Oddly enough, of the $4 Bill. We gave to rebuild the devastated Afghanistan, [for comparison, this year’s rebuild budget for Japan was $262 Billion, two years after its earthquake] half of the money went to DynCorp, a military contractor). On a side note, Afghanistan is also responsible for some 75% of the Worlds opium production, and that figure has curiously not dropped since we invaded. As Noam Chomsky said: “Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. ”All of this leads neatly into my second: We have no business being in the Ukraine. As Mark Twain said “God created war so that Americans would learn geography”. American world politics is essentially a one sided affair that can be summed up with the neat stupidity of Pres. George Bush, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (. http://goo.gl...).I ask pro to assume for a moment in his so-called “Hegemonic stability theory” another Nation besides America took control. Would you be so pleased if this world power marginalized your country? Why do we respect the Ukraine’s sovereignty, but not Iraq’s? Why are we prepared to give a brand new Government, ripe with passion and blinded by rage, weapons? Why don’t we respect Russia for what it is: a nation capable of making its own decisions, especially when it comes to decisions in its own backyard? At the very heart of the matter is an old American assumption, one that is prideful, arrogant, and deeply misguided. America assumes it is boss. It assumes it can tell countries what to do and how to do it. It sees the world as its oyster, with resources ripe for plundering, so long as it can avoid destruction. This idea is imperialistic and impossible when held up to modern warfare. We live in times where a move to threaten Russia could be a move to end the world, in the most literal sense possible. We don’t push miniature plastic men around on a big world maps while we laugh over whiskey and cigars anymore. John McCain said, “We are all Ukrainians in the respect that we have a sovereign nation that is again…being taken in as part of Russia. .. that is not acceptable to an America that stands up for the rights of human beings. We are Georgians. And we are Ukrainians. ” Mr. McCain is an aged man, at 77, and perhaps has forgotten he is American. This "America that stands up for the rights of human beings" must have forgotten, too, about Guantanamo bay, and all those drones they fly over Pakistan, which, by the way, have liberated over 700 civilians, around 200 of which were children, from their mortal coils. Maybe this America, or this senator, has forgotten about that little invasion they did in 2003, in search of nonexistent WMD's in Iraq. The very same Iraq, which, right now, is still a deadly and nasty country, only now it's a bombed and destabilized nasty country. This leads to my third point: It is not worth it to threaten Russia. Obama must ask himself if a world without a war, or a cold war, is worth giving up to come to the aid of the Ukrainians. I would say it is not. Especially when the Russians are acting in their own backyard and have perfectly acceptable reasons to want to assimilate Crimea, a Crimea that wants to be assimilated yet for some reason we won’t let them. Links. http://www.thedailybeast.com...http://www.newyorker.com... . http://www.scribd.com... . http://www.highbeam.com... . http://news.google.com...