How Long Can the US Be at War?

Name: Instructor: Institution: Social Sciences Date: The Ethics and Practicality of the War in Afghanistan and Iraq The United States of America, arguably the world's most powerful nation, and one of the most developed on the planet, has a rather curious foreign policy. The country has got a proud history that helped shape up its various forms of governance to achieve an optimum and widely acceptable form of internal governance that it enjoys right now, which has also made it the greatest democracy on earth. After achieving internal governance, the nation developed a new strategy to ensure global domination. This is the basis of its foreign policy in general. From the early years of the last century, the country has continuously tried exerting its influence over the rest of the world, as it tests its might over the other nations. Its watershed moment came during the Second World War, when it contributed significantly, to the defeat of Germany. This is what effectively ended the war. There is the other major war that America engaged in the Far East, the Vietnam War. Questions still linger on the reasons behind it, as the country sent thousands and thousands of soldiers in a never-ending war. There is, however, the later foreign engagements that the U.S has taken, which seem to raise quite a lot of controversy; the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ever since the invasion in the early 2000s, the United States has realized very little success. Initially, it was the fight against global terrorism, after the bombing of the WTO in September 2001.Later on, the war continuously evolved, from peacekeeping to stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, while there was also the other eye on the rich oil reserves in these nations, particularly Iraq. It should be noted that a lot of resources, regarding both humans, infrastructural and monetary, are being spent on the war. The whole thing has raised a debate on whether the war is ethical or just a practical application of some theory. The United States deems the war in the Middle East justified because they are fighting off three different challenges; terrorism, despotic regimes and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. Nations such as South Korea and Iraq itself were being ruled by autocratic leaders, who forced their rule over the people. To the United States, such individuals were rather difficult to manipulate, control, or even at the least, to contain. When the question about the Iraq invasion is brought up, the foremost reason given is that it was due to the terrorist threat posed by Al Qaeda group, which at that time was the largest terrorist organization in the world, and the search for weapons of mass destruction, which the Saddam government had been accused of having. George Bush, the then U.S President, opted not to differentiate between the terrorists and the nations that harbored them, instead taking both of them as one and the same thing; enemies of the U.S. One great foreign policy of the United States is its nonnegotiation with terrorists and terrorist organizations. This is mainly the main reason as to why Afghanistan was quickly invaded, since the United States believed it to be the breeding ground for the terrorist group and other minor extremist movements,...