Wars with American Involvement
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The United States has become a symbol of freedom around the world and continues to strive to help maintain peace. Now is this something that the United States needs to do the quick answer is no but most of their effort is to prevent certain actions taking place beforehand. There have been a lot of altercations that without the United States helping things may have gone differently. For this argument, the United States should help out when it needs to but other countries can not only depend on the United States for help. The United States should be a policing power in the world because of such battles like the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Gulf War, Bosnian War, and the war in Afghanistan.
The Spanish-American War occurred in 1898 when Cuba was struggling for their independence from Spain. This was a concern for the United States since they had many invested business in Cuba as well as citizens there. Before the United States would commit to anything they would send a battleship the USS Maine to the Havana harbor. On February 15th 1898 the USS Maine and would push the United States into war with Spain. Though they wanted to remain neutral with the conflict they were drawn in with the attack on the USS Maine. The resulting conflict lead to the Treaty of Paris which was signed on December 10th 1898 which Spain would renounce its claim over Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and transfer the sovereignty over the Philippines (Trask, 2011).
In 1917 the United States would enter World War I when they were trying to remain neutral again to stay out of the conflict. This was changed however when Germany would use its submarines to attack neutral ships. The Germans violated its pledge to suspend restricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean (Randolph, 2011). Germany would attack and kill passenger ships claiming they were carrying supplies to Allied nations. Because of this broken pledge and also that Germany was trying to get Mexico to join them in their cause prompted the United States to enter the war. The war would end with Germany surrendering in 1918 which would lead to the Treaty of Versailles.
World War II started in 1939, while the United States would remain out of the war until 1941. The United states would remain neutral and only support the war with its resources to the Allies until the attack of Peral Harbor on December 7, 1941. The United States would have to face fascist aggression and the militaristic ideology of the Axis powers. The United States would provide the strong industry and manpower that would help turn the course of the war. With the end of World War II in 1945 it would lead to the creation of the United Nations which is supposed to maintain the peace and security of the world.
The Gulf War began on August 2nd, 1990 and was in response to the invasion of Kuwait from Iraq. This war was made of mainly the United States and coalition forces that saw this incident as an unjust and uncalled for. When the invasion first started, fellow Arab powers called upon the United States to intervene (History.com, 2009). The coalition would raise 700,000 troops but 540,000 were United States military members and would lead the forces that would start the great air campaign and later push in with ground forces (Britannica, 2016). The war would end on February 28, 1991 and would lead to the Iraqi forces retreating Kuwait and also lead to the UN to pass Resolutions that would create a cease-fire and create a special commission to inspect Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons if they had any.
The Bosnia War which took place in 1992 and was the second most act of genocide since World War II with the Nazi regime. This war would kill up to 200,000 Muslim civialins and over two million would become refugees during the conflict. The United States would remain out of the conflict and help produce cease fire treaties which were later broke by the Bosnian Serbs. This would have led to the United States to take firm action and lead a massive bombing campaign against the Bosnia forces key military positions. Following this the United States would force the Serb leaders to talk peace and sign agreement that would end the conflict as well as have the leaders face war crimes (“The History”, 1999).
The War in Afghanistan was driven by an attack on the United States by the Taliban that would bring a very long drawn out war. After the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City the United States would demand for the leader of the Taliban Osama Bin Laden be turned over for war crimes. It would not be until 2011 that the leader would be found and killed by American forces in Pakistan. After this the United States, would help by leaving behind a peacekeeping military force to help rebuild the country. This would be a slow withdrawal of troops after 2014 until 2016. This was a long drawn out style war which from experience I spent most of my career in being deployed to this country where we help try to bring a stable government.
In conclusion, there have been many wars in United States history and some could have been avoided. This is not the view though of America when they feel something is unjust and unfair they will step up and stand for what they think is right. There may be views that the United States should leave other countries alone and worry about their own country. That the United States is a kind of bully that if you don’t believe in their point of view then they will attack you. This is not the case the United States takes on the role of policing of the world not that it craves power or wants to show off its might. The United States is a super power and it needs to act like one by helping out those that need it or ask for help and will fight for the rights of all around the world.
References
History.com Staff. (2009). Persian Gulf War. Retrieved March 06, 2017, from http://www.history.com/topics/persian-gulf-war
Randolph, S., Dr. (2011). U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917. Retrieved March 06, 2017, from https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/wwi
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2016). Persian Gulf War. Retrieved March 06, 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Persian-Gulf-War
The History Place – Genocide in the 20th Century: Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-95. (1999). Retrieved March 06, 2017, from http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/bosnia.htm
Trask, D. (2011, June 22). The Spanish-American War. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/trask.html