The United States has a moral obligation to mediate and alleviate international conflicts.

I had the same debate in school and read through it and thought it would be a good idea to debate it here. So the following is my argument against the topic of debate. Introduction: "You can't imagine what we felt, I saw our future destroyed," she says. "How do you know that a future of a country ... has been destroyed? It's when there is no justice, no security, and no education, if you reach the stage of no studies and no education. And when you lose that, that's it, the people are finished." This quote is from an Iraqi student who talks of what Americans have brought to Iraq. We tried to alleviate what Americans called a conflict, but was actually nothing but a safe environment. We tried to save the world from what we called an evil dictator, but it seems that we haven't done anything except destroy a nation. This is only one of the many conflicts that have erupted from us trying to force our own governments on people. We do not mediate conflicts or alleviate them; we either a) worsen them or b) do something about it and get nothing in return. I propose we become a semi-isolated nation and stay away from international conflicts unless we are directly, physically attacked or we become a semi-isolated nation and only attack when we get money or goods from other nations. We would be able then to preserve our own natural way of life and not be affected by outside conflict. That is why I oppose the resolution that: Resolved: The United States has a moral obligation to mediate and alleviate international conflicts. Definitions: Conflict – to fight or contend; to do battle Mediate – to settle (disputes, strikes, etc.) as an intermediary between parties; to reconcile National Security - protection of the interests of a country Self-Preservation - protection of oneself from harm or destruction or the instinct for individual preservation; the innate desire to stay alive. Value: The Value I have chosen is National Security and Safety combined with the self-preservation of the American people. National Security and Safety is when people must preserve the peace of ones own country, in this case it would be the United States of America. Self-Preservation is considered the highest law of man and is what must be needed to keep our homeland alive. Criteria: We must solely ban together as a nation and be more preservative in our ideals and in what we do. This would make us an even stronger nation. If we stay out of foreign affairs our nation will prosper. Contention 1: The American people always sacrifice themselves for the sake of other nations, and we get nothing in return. For example, the Genocide in Rwanda. People were being brutally murdered and beaten to death because the Belgians placed the nation into two separate fighting groups. We, the Americans, finally go out to help the nation and afterwards we are told we took too long and we were treated with utmost disrespect by the African nations. Why are we being held responsible for the deaths that Africans and Europeans started? Another example, the Americans lifted billions and billions of debt off the all the African nations. But in Zimbabwe the President/Dictator, Robert Mugabe, told the Americans that if that is all we could lift off then we did not help the continent of Africa at all. At this comment most of the other African nations leaders applauded. Is this how we are treated after we lifted billions of dollars that were from war debt, off of these poor nations? Why should we constantly press ourselves onto situations that we only get disrespect back from? My last example for this contention is that we rescued France in World War One, World War Two, and now when we get into a War, they pay us back by not doing anything about it with us and totally ignore the issue. Now tell me, is it morally right to go into a country and not get anything in return? No, because we are depleting our valuable resources for these gone-bad nations. Let's preserve what we have left and make ourselves stronger. Contention 2: It is not morally right to go into conflicts we are not meant to be part of. Look at the Armenian Genocide. The Armenians were being killed by the Ottoman Empire. What did we do? Absolutely nothing. Armenia is still alive and doing well actually. We didn't go into a conflict that wasn't part of us, and look what happened. No worries about it. Iraq . . . look at it. Iraq didn't do ANYTHING AT ALL to us. Look how messed up it is now. We have established a government that isn't responsible and doesn't work. We have totally bombed the nation. People say the Iraqis attacked us. NO THEY DIDN'T! Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban attacked us. They are part of Afghanistan. Why did we go into Iraq? I don't know. There wasn't a reason that's for sure. It's gotten so bad that 6/10 Iraqi adults want us out and 9/10 Iraqi youths want us out. It's gotten so bad that their own people don't enjoy the country anymore. We have killed tens of thousands of innocents. Why? Because we intervened in a conflict we were not part of. That's not moral at all. It's actually quite stupid of us. This is why we do not involve ourselves in foreign affairs. The Iraqi nation did not need us, but we went in and we destroyed it. The Armenian nation needed us and we didn't go in and now it is fine. Let's stay out of foreign affairs before we make things worse. Contention 3: Self-Preservation is the highest law. Let's apply it. Combined with the security and safety that we apply to our country, we will not only be a greater nation, but a formidable opponent if anyone wishes to challenge us. What could we do to make ourselves safer? Well first of all we could get stricter on who we let into the country. If we see people threaten the government and threaten the peace of our nation, inside our country then we should be able to arrest them. In 1992 Radical Islamic Americans and Muslims were in Washington saying "Down with America! Down with the U.K.!" They repeated sayings like "We will eliminate the White House and then call it the Muslim House!" If we stayed out of Middle Eastern Affairs this probably might not have happened in the first place. Doesn't your heart cringe when Americans are starting to say that we should ‘eliminate' the White House? No offence to radical Islam, but if we put their foreign aspects on our unique nation, then all our women will have to wear fully-clothed gowns so we can only see there eyes. All the people of our nation will have to listen to the government or be killed. The freedom we so desiringly wanted to have will be diminished. This is why we should preserve the society we have, and we should preserve the freedom we have. These international conflicts that we ‘mediate' are causing us deliberate harm. Conclusion: How was America formed? We won the American Revolutionary War. We won our independence from the British Empire, the most powerful nation in the world at that time. We declared Independence from a struggling nation. We started to industrialize our nation and take on other nations economically. Our nation was building and building up through the whole of the 20th century. Our nation started to reach it's peak of power, then the Cold War came upon us. And all our issues basically were influenced on Foreign Policy. Immigrants started coming illegally into our nation. People complained on that America wasn't like their own country and we started to change. I fear for our nation is being influenced by foreigners and by wars we are not meant to be part of. Let us limit our foreign mediation. Let us become our own unique nation once again, and let us preserve our true American way of life. We can only gain this through National Safety and Security and through the Self-Preservation of our people.