Dear Mr. Obama | Teen Ink

Dear Mr. Obama

January 13, 2012
By Anonymous

Dear President Obama,

The Vietnam War, which was a police action in reality because it is only a war with a declaration of war. Since a war can only be started with a declaration of war, then every so called war that we have had since World War 2 (1941-1945) have all been police actions. The point of a police action is not to conquer and take over the land of the enemy, like in a war, but to support the country in need or fight for our reasons. After a victory in a police action, the country in which doing the police actions are to keep some sort of military presence to solve the problem.
In Vietnam (1954-1973), the North Vietnam were communist, known as the Viet Cong. South Vietnam were not communist, so in a sense allied to the United States of America. We aided South Vietnam to keep communism out of the country and being forced upon South Vietnam. After losing a total of 58,000 soldiers in this war and Vietnam losing more than 3 million people, we pulled out of this police action. Some may say it was good to pull out because both countries had great loses but all of them were in vane. The point was to end the communism in this country but when we pulled out of the war in 1973 while the enemy was weak, not when the enemy had lost, we had lost all those men in vane since we pulled out all of our troops. North Vietnam maybe had great loses but all they had to do was walk into South Vietnam to conquer what we had just fought for. We did not leave a military presence and for all of that fighting and the loss of our men, we let them walk into South Vietnam not only for them to win this conflict, but by taking control of South Vietnam in 1975. The communist forces seized control of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War, and the country was unified as the "Socialist Republic of Vietnam" the following year. We were so close to wrapping up the war and winning when we pulled out.
With all of this said it leads me to my real reason for this letter. On Sept. 11, 2001, 2995 United States civilians were killed by terrorist militants from the terrorist group known as al-Qaed. We retaliated by doing a police action in the countries that this terrorist group al-Qaed had been and lived in (Iraq and Afghanistan). We entered both countries not to invade or take over the country but to stop the terrorists group from killing the cilivians of these countries. We had also been there to capture or kill the men responable for Septmeber 11, 2001. We had been in this war since 2001 up until 2011. We did kill both leaders and many men under them, but still with this terrorist threat and Iraq's military not yet very organized and good at all. We should have finished our training with Iraq's soldiers and kept a military presence such as a base in their country to help them and finish this conflict along with the training. Instead of staying in Iraq we pulled out of all our troops.
Maybe this will not go the same way as the Vietnam War by the enemy just taking back what they had before without a fight. But since Iraq did not know of us pulling the troops out and their military is still not trained very well, it's a good posibility that al-Qaed will just move back into their country of Iraq not achieving our goal of stopping them. If al-Qaed goes back into Iraq then all of our men that died in Iraq will have died in vane because we just let al-Qaed return to Iraq to continue their terrorism. If this were to happen we would have lost the war in Iraq.
Obama you have kept the troops in Iraq for most of your term. I do think it was time for an end to Iraq as well. I know you pulled out all of the troops to save the lives of our soldiers and to just end the conflict that was already over. I do agree that the war/conflict should have been over and we should have pulled out but I think we should have pulled out only most of our troops to win this conflict so the enemy does not just return to Iraq and take control of it again.
Out of the 10 years of fighting and pulling out all of our troops suddenly, I don't want to see the country we have been fighting with (Iraq) and partly for fall under terrorist control. If this were to happen then I ask of everyone, "why were we even there?" We need to keep the country of Iraq in the hands of the Iraqi people.






Sincerely:









Person who does not approve of Obama



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This article has 1 comment.


on Jan. 17 2012 at 7:36 pm
abbeyroad12 BRONZE, Castro Valley, California
4 articles 0 photos 1 comment
I understand that you know some about the war in Iraq, so I would think you would understand that Obama is not the one to blame here. This war wasn't started by him. It shouldn't have been his responsibility. And with many people pressuring him to end a war that so far has nothing for the U.S. and Iraq, he had to take action. Yes, it is dangerous to leave Iraq with the possibility of terrorists taking control. Yes, I think that leaving the country completely was not the best choice. But I don't think that we should be running around pointing fingers. Last time I checked, that isn't going to get us anywhere. We need to stop the arguing and work together towards a solution.