Five Years in Iraq: Is it something to be proud of ?

Five years have passed since the invasion of the US Army to Iraq. There are groups of politicians who take these five years as success; while other thinks it was nothing but a waste of taxpayer’s money. And this argument has been going on without any conclusion. Yesterday, I read an article in cnn.com, which said that today not only we passed five years milestone, nevertheless we lost 4000 lives of US military unfortunately. Among them more than 3000 life were gone in the post war era. On March 24, 2008, President Bush said that we are lurking towards peace in Iraq. According The New York Times, president believes that the US army sacrifice in Iraq has not gone in vain. Therefore, the question remains do we really use these lives and money for a good purpose?

Since the tragedy of September 11, the country had gone through a shock and now it is slowly healing. We all know that it is never going to be the same. However, the US government along with the country people became emotional and decided to fight against terrorist organization like Al-Qaeda. No matter how much government say, it is very hard to admit that we are fully successful over them. Even after seven years, Osama Bin Laden is on the run and still haunting us with all kinds of threats. The US government thought that by overwhelming Iraq could made much more easier to get control on the Al-Qaeda, but many people doubt that today, it has really happened. The US army went out and fought against Saddham Hussein regime thinking that they possessed weapons of mass destruction that turn out to be wrong. During this period hundreds of thousands innocent civilian got killed. So, my question is who should take responsibility for those killings? Now Iraq is on the verge of getting into civil war because of the growing conflicts on Shea and Sunni Muslims. Because of that risk, the US cannot even take out its army from Iraq. As described in The New York Times, even though, President Bush promised that he would reduce the number of troops in future, it remains same in 2008.The government cannot keep the US armies over there for longer period because of increasing protest back in the US. Therefore, no matter how much the current US government feels proud of, I believe, invasion in Iraq five years ago proved to be a failure. However, I do believe that the US must fight against the terrorism methodically not emotionally.

A Crisis of Faith

The article “A Crisis of Faith” by a New York Times columnist Paul Krugman brought up an interesting question about the US economic status at present. Obviously we all know the financial condition of the US has not been in a good shape since it has reached the peak in 2000 AD. Series of Gulf War and Afghanistan War. Sequentially, the internet bubble collapse, 9/11, and then the wars lowered the consumer spending. Since 2001 the US economic had been in a stagflation up until 2005 when we started to see little bit of progress in the market. We witness that the government did not actively involved in the marked until it got really worse.

Since 2005 we started to see the same problem in the housing market. The forty years low interest and the booming housing marking made the general public invest more and more regardless of what sort of income source they had. According to the article the trouble in the financial market was brought up by investors and the banking, which I do not believe it is true. Yes, today we can claim that the faith between the investors and bankers has diminished, but who is to blame to bring up this situation today. My question here is why the federal government was apathetic about putting some sort of regulation from the very beginning? How come people who do not have stable job were allowed to get enough loans to buy more than one houses. As we all know how the banking system collapsed in the early 1930s. Having witness the lack of government intervention at the right time has brought up such financial crisis in the financial market today. The author complains about not having the faith between bankers and investors. In my point of view it is not bankers or consumers to blame who created record high default loan in the market, it is the lack of government regulation that has not been implemented on time. The US government could have intervened by setting up strict rules and regulation against banking system as well as against consumers even if the market was running smoothly. In the article the author is right in his point of view for the current situation. However, to find a solution we have to look at few years back what brought this problem.