I'm Back!

Hello again to anyone that reads this blog. So I'm back now, and I hope to start this blog up again. I start working on my thesis in a few weeks, so hopefully I'll have things to write about. But for now here is something I've been thinking about for the last few days.

I was in Washington DC this past week and the first day I was there I saw the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. At the Korean War Memorial there is a wall that has the words, "Freedom is not Free". This quote really bothers me. Freedom is something that should be free. I understand that there are places on this earth where people are not free. But those are not the places that the US go to fight, instead they choose places that are strategic for them. Afghanistan was a war that was motivated by the feeling of revenge, and justifiably so. Iraq on the other hand was a war for so many different things, but not one of them, the freedom of Americans. Saddam Hussien never posed a serious threat to American freedom as in evidenced by the fact that there were no weapons of mass distruction. Iran and their nuclear program pose a much larger threat to American freedom than Iraq ever did. The problem with that is that the US cannot go into Iran because the threat is actually too high.

If freedom is not free than the Americans should be fighting the countries that are an actual danger to the US. Iran is probably the American's biggest threat. If they are able to have nuclear weapons then the balance of power in the Middle East will shift dramatically. Because the US has entered a war of attrition against terrorism that they cannot seem to even be winning, they are spread far too thin to be able to realistically mount a resonable response to the Iran question. Aside from the potential nuclear consequences, Iran also has the ability to drastically shift the global economy. If Iran was provoked, they could pepper the Strait of Hormuz, which is the main artery for Saudi, Iraqi, Kutwaiti, Bahraini, UAE and Iranian oil, with mines. These countries are all OPEC members and produce the majority of the world's oil and by putting mines in the strait it would stop the flow of oil to the rest of the world. This could throw the world into a severe depression and the US would be almost powerless to stop it.

When fighting for freedom the US needs to look at what the actual threat to their freedom is. I don't think that if the US were to go to war with Iran that American citizens would be any less free. As a Canadian I don't feel that the US is fighting for my freedom, and I'm sure there are many of countries that would feel the same way. If there was to be a war with Iran then the US would really by fighting for the freedom that their position as the most powerful nation provides them. If this is what freedom is, then I don't think that there should be a monument for it. In Washington the quote over looks the Korean War Memorial. To me the quote minimizes the amount of people that died in that war. Americans and many Canadians fought in the first conflict of the cold war. All the people that died were not fighting for the freedom of everyday life, they were fighting for America's position in the world.

Maybe I'm taking the quote too seriously, but as I was in Washington it seemed that nothing engraved in stone was to be taken lightly. For this reason I feel that it is justified to offer this critique.

Thoughts?