Humans naturally feel the need to protect themselves, which is possibly why the U.S government feels the need to follow suit and in history appears to have committed unorthodox acts to keep their country safe, even if it means betraying their own ideals. As America’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln once said, “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other”. America, as spoken by Abraham Lincoln, believes that they must protect themselves even at the cost of others. This is why many believe the United States of America shouldn’t have the right to impact and change other countries, because of the cost others have paid for America’s own protection. This cost has taken a form in many ways, but most importantly in the form of 2 wars, the war in Vietnam, and the war in Iraq.

November 1, 1955, the United States of America invades Vietnam starting a long and problematic war. This war resulted in the deaths of roughly 1.45 million people(Wikipedia) in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This war was believed to be caused all because of one theory. Starting since the rise of the soviet union most Americans are perceived to have thought that communism is a blight. According to former U.S president John F Kennedy, “Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.” This quote shows the John F Kennedy like a fair number of Americans believes that communism is something bad that tends to deserve harsh treatment. This openly shared American view that communism is in most cases bad, is further reinforced by the substantially bad impacts and relations communist countries such as Russia have with the rest of the world. But although it could be said that communism is worth fighting against, Vietnam wasn’t communist. As a matter of fact, on the 11 of November 1945, Vietnam’s only communist party dissolved themselves in the favor of representing a wider front( Global Britannica). So when the U.S invaded Vietnam it wasn’t out of the pressing need to protect their fellow neighbors, but out of a strongly held but doubtful theory. This theory was known as the Indochinese domino theory, believed by many high up U.S officials at the start of the Vietnam war. This theory essentially was the idea that if Vietnam fell to communism that the rest of Asia would fall too. If “you have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty it will go over very quickly” said the 34th U.S president Dwight D Eisenhower echoing the thoughts of the American generals invading Vietnam. These thoughts, ideas, and theories led to the U.S having a major goal in Vietnam, which was to stop Vietnam from becoming an independent communist country. This meant they were fighting a war against independence. Which can be seen to prove as The United States of America themselves had no greater fight and no greater ideal than independence, that they believed they could go against their own idea of fairness while endangering the lives of Vietnamese men and women for their own unorthodox aims.

On the contrary, it could be argued that even though Vietnam wasn’t communist they still had their main support from communist China and eventually the Kremlin themselves. This support from communists was even further reinforced as communist China before the Vietnam war was supporting the once communist Viet Minh against French colonialists(Embers of war). Not only that but many of the Chinese communists, in particular, are radicals who believe, “communism is not love, communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy”(Mao Zedong “former chairmen of the communist party”) making many they support appear to be a legitimate threat to the greater majority of the world.

Sadly it only took 28 years for the U.S to replicate their decisions in Vietnam, except this time in Iraq. On March 20, 2003, fighting broke out as the first U.S led coalition soldiers landed in Iraq, starting a war that has been going on for more than 13 years. This war known as the Iraq war toppled the government that Saddam Hussein had built, ending his rule in the country. But what prompted the U.S and other countries to attack Iraq? The first reason and the rationale for the Iraq war were weapons of mass destruction, the United States repeatedly bombed Iraq’s suspected nuclear facilities in the hope of stopping them from developing nukes of mass destruction. But it has been proven that the U.S didn’t find “conclusive proof that Iraq possessed large stocks of banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.”(council on foreign relations). Sadly the U.S attacked Iraq with a lack of conclusive evidence, most of which coming from Iraqi defectors who may or may not have been telling the truth.(Council for foreign relations). The second reason the U.S attacked Iraq connecting to the idea of Nuclear bombs was that they were failing to comply with the U.N inspectors. This was completely non-sequitur as all countries have their own rights of whether to comply or not comply with the United Nations. Iraq’s government said the reason for not allowing the U.N to do inspections, was that they were “spying for the US and Israel”, which was true as the U.N later “acknowledged that inspectors had been passing information onto US intelligence services”(BBC news). Because of this blockage of U.N inspectors, the United States after a further rejection from Iraq launched “cruise missile and bombing attacks on some 100 targets across Iraq.”(BBC news) This launch of sudden missiles and bombings was because of a final failure to comply with weapons inspections. These attacks by the U.S can be perceived and judged to be because they didn’t want the world where another country was a Nuclear superpower, out of their own self-interests.

But the same time, the U.S killed off and destroyed the new found wealth, education policies, industry, infrastructure, and health care that Saddam Hussein’s government had provided, even if those goals were achieved through the mistreatment and inhumane treatment of Saddam Hussein’s opponents. Not only that but although it might be argued that the U.N shouldn’t have been forcing Iraq to comply with weapons inspections, Iraq not agreeing to these inspections technically could have proven their lack of innocence. It could also be argued the U.S were serving the best interests of the world as they believed in the possibility of “Iraq sharing weapons of mass destruction with terrorists.”(Council for foreign relations) This possibility of Iraq maybe sharing weapons of mass destruction with terrorists, was further proved by the fact that they had been found to shelter some terrorists and the former prime minister Saddam Hussein for all the good things he did was substantially corrupt and illegitimate.

A simple solution to this would be for the world to say, the U.S should not get involved within other countries international affairs on a major scale unless they have been given permission from that country’s government. This would mean that the U.S would have less of a chance of starting unpopular ill-judged foreign decisions such as starting wars, as there would be more input from other countries who might see the situation more clearly.

Noam Chomsky’s thoughts on this article:

Thanks for sending your essay. It’s very encouraging to see that you – and I hope others like you – are thinking seriously about these matters.

My own view on these matters is somewhat different. The threat of “communism” is really the threat of independent development, outside the framework of the US system of global power. In the case of Iraq, if the US had really been concerned about WMD it would have permitted the inspectors to continue their work – finding nothing, as we know now. The real reasons, I think, are those that were made explicit in 2007-8 as the scale of the US defeat (and it was substantial) was becoming clear: to establish a client state in which the US would gain military bases in the center of the global energy system, and to assure preferential treatment for US corporations in exploiting Iraq’s vast energy resources. If Iraq were in central Africa and its main export were tomatoes, the US wouldn’t have invaded.

Controversial, of course.