America should have never gotten involved in world war 1

I can say right now though that only some of the arguments are actually going to find clashes with the arguments I am about to bring out, as I am slightly confused by some of the others my opponent decided to choose for this debate. However, more on that later, let me introduce my side of the argument. For this debate, I shall justify the reasons the US joined the war in the first place in round two and I will then proceed to analyze the consequences of those actions in round three, which will be rebuttal round. Argument one - The breaking of the 'Suxxex Pledge'We are all aware that for the most part of the Great War the United States adopted a stance of neutrality and isolated themselves from the war raging in Europe, although during the war they proceeded to trade resources into Europe due to the growing demand for goods by european nations who were badly affected. [A] Likewise, Germany was badly affected by the British blockade that began as early as 1915 in order to prevent supplies from reaching the Central powers. [B] What is the link you may ask? The United States being neutral traded with both the Allied forces and the Central powers, including Germany before the British blockade. The blockade made relations difficult between the US and Germany but still public opinion was not divided in the States yet. This is where the Suxxex Pledge comes in. The Pledge was a promise made by Germany in 1916 to the United States stipulating that a policy will be followed regarding naval and submarine warfare where the indiscriminate sinking of non-military vessels will not be tolerated. [C] Germany, being stretched by the blockade ultimately decided to break their pledge in february 1917 in order to cripple Britain and establish peace before the US was capable of joining the war. Hence all vessels were again targetted by the German forces including neutral vessels from the United States. I need not remind the proposition of the already damaging impact the 'Sinking of the Lusitania' had in 1915 where 114 Americans were killed after it was struck by a german torpedo. [D] The United States initially tried to resolve this peacefully by having Germany abide by the Suxxex Pledge hence keeping American citizens safe, but after Germany broke the pledge it became very clear that the US had to intervene in order to protect the lives of its American citizens who were at constant danger from foreign threat. Not only because of the threat it had on American lives, but also because of the fact that the sinking of the Lusitania and the breaking of the Suxxex pledge led to much of the public opinion in the United States to shift against Germany. Even though Wildrow Wilson was re-elected on a promise to keep America isolationist, the aggressiveness of German policy as well as the constitutional obligation to protect American citizens from threat slowly began to shift public opinion from adopting a stance of neutrality to joining the Allied Forces. Hence justifying that the US had an growing and important burden to join the war. [E]Argument two - "The Zimmerman Telegraph"Alright then, lets back up for a bit here. It was one thing that the Germans saw that in a desperate situation they had to pull the card of resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, but it is a completely different thing if you were Wildrow Wilson in this example just finding out that the German Foreign Office decided to send an alliance request to your neighbour Mexico offering them to take back the land they lost during the Mexican-American war in exchange for financial and war support. The telegraph sent to Mexico was not only an action that was done behind the back of the United States which thanks to Britain confirmed to the US that the Germans were practically conspiring against them, it was also an action that threatened to take the US states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona from the Americans by force. It was a direct threat on US soil and hence, a direct reason as to why the US would join the war in order to defend its own sovereignity. [F] But let us take a quick closer look at this telegraph as well :- As it reads in the above picture, "You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States is certain" it shows that had Mexico decided to agree with this proposition or had Britain never intercepted the telegram to begin with the United States would have had virtually no idea it was at serious risk of being invaded itself. And as such, at this point it was a justified means of retaliation by the US to join the war as their sovereignity was considerably threatened by Germany and to the extent of what they knew at the time during the war they have no idea what else Germany may have been plotting in the event that Germany were to become desperate in winning the war. As I stated earlier, you will find that in this round I have only decided to post the reasons the United States joined the war. This is simply because it is vital to analyze firstly the causes before moving on to the consequences as to why the United States joined the war. Which I will say now that I feel the proposition has rather unfairly dismissed in his opening argument as something the Germans didn't do on 'purpose'. I have offered to elaborate on that and effectively prove that there was more to it than simply what the proposition has stated, (without offering rebuttals to his arguments which is to be saved for the next round of course) so that there is a clear clash between my reasoning why the United States should have joined the war and my opponent's reasoning for the benefit of this debate. To quickly summarize my opening argument I will present the key facts in bullet point form below - The sinking of the Lusitania along with many other vessels before and after Germany agreed to and broke the Suxxex pledge led to the deaths of many American lives which prompted American retaliation. The secret plans Germany had designed to use against the United States in the event that Mexico agrees to the alliance offer with Germany was a direct threat on the safety of US soil and their sovereignty over the territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The plans developed behind the back of the United States government caused great uncertainty for the United States to trust Germany at all due to their severed relationship and prompted the United States to defend itself. The actions of unrestricted naval and submarine warfare swayed more public opinion in favour of intervention and action against Germany. I now leave it to my opponent to present his rebuttals to the causes I have brought up in which I will then subsequently present my rebuttals to the consequences of the war. I will now hand over to the proposition. Over to you. Sources -[A] - . http://eh.net...[B] - . http://www.iwm.org.uk...[C] - . http://europeanhistory.about.com...[D] - . http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com...[E] - . http://histclo.com...[F] - . https://www.archives.gov...