elijah english final project

The speaker discusses the division in American culture and the controversy of the United States' involvement in foreign altercations. They mention the Vietnam War and how the United States failed to adapt to the country they were fighting in. They also discuss the relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and how the United States' involvement in Ukraine is seen as a way to deter Russia. The speaker then talks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the amount of aid the United States provides to both sides. They argue that the United States should not be involved in providing military assistance to Israel. They suggest that the United States should withdraw from the conflict and focus on domestic issues. Hey, my name's Elijah. This is my podcast for the controversial topic and reflection assignment. Nowadays, division in general on topics has become a center point in American culture. You know, like Democrat versus Republican, sports team versus sports team, every single thing in America that people get emotionally involved in is a competition. It's a one side versus the other side. People want to make it black and white, depending on the issue. In my opinion, there is not a single more fire-filled topic among American citizens than the question of whether or not the United States should be involved in foreign altercations. I'm talking whether it's, you know, financial troubles, whether it's wars, which is what we're going to be talking about particularly in this little podcast here. America like to get involved and try to almost just march their way in and try to fix everything, which is what we're going to be talking about today. So, like I said previously, we're going to be talking about kind of like fighting and war. So, going back quite a good bit to the Cold War, we're going to talk about the whole Vietnam situation. We could talk about South Korea and North Korea, but in my opinion, that was kind of a really pointless altercation. Nothing really happened other than North Korea getting shut down pretty much. So, we're going to be focusing on Vietnam. Now, if you look at the essay, The Vietnam War by Maj-Idi Angel, I believe I'm pronouncing that right. The writer states the United States failed to adapt to the country, country being Vietnam. Yeah, just failed to like adapt to the country that they were fighting a war in, you know, like this is something that they'd never seen before. All these people who had signed up to fight were these American citizens who were like blood-hungry to serve their country, but really had not a clue what they were getting themselves into. And once they got there, they were a little shell-shocked by the ferocity of the Northern Vietnam fighters. Of just how casualty-filled war is in general, and it really, really backfired on the United States. Yeah, the war itself caused citizens of the United States to be very upset with how little of a say they had in what their country was involved in. And this led to a lot of protests among universities and in major cities. And it got to a point where America was forced to pull its troops out of Vietnam, which ended up creating modern-day Vietnam as we know it, the communist state that's there now. And I really think that could have been avoided if we had taken better precautions there. I really don't think the United States needed to get involved. It's just a battle to prove between them and Russia, which is basically the whole Cold War, who is bigger and better and more fierce, who has a better style of government. It's like watching two little brothers argue, you know? Talk about furthermore, we can talk about something more recent here. Actually, first, let's go to America's foreign affairs policy, which we can find in the Morality in American Foreign Policy book by Robert W. McElroy. I'm going to pull that up right here, and I'm going to read a little segment out of Chapter 1 here, page 4, Subsect 3, where he states, but there has also appeared a series of more general theoretical treatments of the role of morality in foreign policy, treatments that grapple with the realist analysis of the international relations and offer substantive, non-normative criticisms of the realist worldview, such as writers Charles Bietz, Marshall Kopin, and J.E. Eyre have challenged the realist paradigm by arguing that all political action is goal-oriented activity, that there are substantive principles that meaningfully address questions of international affairs, and that the formulation of foreign policy is inextricably a domain of moral choice. So, basically, a lot of big words there, a lot of authors he's mentioned who have a big say, but what he's trying to get across is foreign policy isn't really international policy. It's international law. It's international what the person who's creating the foreign policy is choosing. It's human. It's not, you know, write it in stone, seal it, like Ten Commandments type thing. This is just something that a person has written who believes is right. And I really think that we take foreign affair policy far too much like, oh, this is what has to happen. It's not. It can be changed. It was written. It can be changed. It's, you know, we look at Vietnam. It's like, oh, we had to step in there. No, we didn't. We didn't need to step in there. We could have just ignored it altogether, and nothing would have changed, and less lives would have been lost if that had happened. So, I thought we could talk about something more recent, the whole Ukraine versus Russia situation that we had going on a couple months ago that's kind of lost a little bit of media value to something that we will be talking about later in this episode. If you read the Russian Academy of Science journal, which is a Russian journal, the relationship between Ukraine and the United States is described as this. From Kiev's viewpoint, the strategic cooperation with Washington is considered as an important tool to promote Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Ukraine to restore its, in quotations, tutorial integrity deterring Russia. So, basically, what this writer here is saying is that Ukraine is using the United States to basically get Russia upset, being like, almost taunt them, like, oh, look, we have the United States on our side. You know, you can't touch us. You can't touch us, which may have backfired a little bit on them there, but people may read this article and use it as proof as to why America should have gotten involved in that situation, and they have a point there. They are correct. By staying in the Ukraine area, the U.S. is making sure Ukraine can retain that independence from Russia, whether Ukraine mock it or not. If America's there, Russia's not going to get involved because they know how much controversy that's going to spike up and how much damage is going to get done. This results in a country becoming more stable on its own and not having to be concerned with a possible invasion. I think this is pre-war. I think this was one of the best examples you could have used of America occupying a country to keep it safe. They did a really good job early on in Ukraine. Yeah, I think where they messed up was media coverage, but there wasn't a whole lot that could be done on that side because we know how the American media can be. They push what they want. They close what they don't, but as we have seen, this doesn't work all the time, which leads me to our main point here, which is something I'm very passionate about that I'll try to dial down, which is the Israeli versus Hamas or Palestine, whatever you would like to call it, altercation that's going on in the Middle East at the minute. So I have some statistics here that talk about money that the United States government has donated to both the Palestinians and the Israelis, if I can slide up right here. Okay, so we have $10.6 billion for assistance through the Defense Department, including air and missile defense support, industrial-based investments, and replenishment of U.S. stocks being drawn down to support Israel. So that's $10.6 billion to Israeli fighting and defense groups, pretty much. The aid aims to bolster Israel's air and missile defense system, blah, blah, blah. Procurement of the Iron Dome, if you don't know what the Iron Dome is, is basically almost like a force field that covers Israel that deters missiles that have been fired into it. And also $3.7 billion for the State Department to strengthen Israeli's military and enhance U.S. Embassy. And then there was also a further $9.15 billion for aid in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and other humanitarian needs that includes support for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and surrounding areas. So pretty much what's happened here is that the U.S. have donated, in terms of humanitarian needs, an equal amount to both Israel and Gaza. And, you know, people may look at that wrong. I think that is a good thing that America's done. That is not, we're getting involved here, that is, hey, we want to help people. We're donating this to people. You know, they're not going to favor one person over another. These are all human beings. What I don't agree with is the assistance for the Defense Department. As we have seen, Israel already have an overwhelming amount of, you know, just sheer brute force over Hamas and Palestine. And I really, really think America should not be getting involved in that front. I know that's a harsh reality for people because they say, oh, it's protection. They're protecting the Israeli people. They're protecting the Palestinian people. They're not protecting anybody because the truth of that matter is that conflict in that region has been going on for thousands of years. You look at ancient books like the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, there's always been conflict in that area for thousands and thousands of years. And that's not going to stop because the Western world wants it to stop. You could theoretically stop it by blowing the country off the face of the map, but I don't think anyone in their right mind would agree or do that. And I really think, and I know it's sad to think about, but America just needs to pull everything out of that situation. The resources that they're putting in is just causing conflict within their own country because America already has an unstable economy at the minute. We're about to hit another election season and that's the main topic of all the debates, you know, how can we repair this American economy? And we're out here donating all this money to Israel and to Palestine and to Ukraine, like billions of dollars that could be used to help America, you know, like we're not at war with anybody, but American citizens need help at the minute to just pay bills and live. And I know that's not as drastic, which is why I say it's a harsh reality. It's not as drastic as what Palestinians in Gaza are going through at the minute, but that's not America's job. America's job is to serve the American people. And yeah, it's sad. As I said previously, I agree with donating for humanitarian needs, but that's partially because of their people and partially because of the amount donated. I think 10 billion was around that figure, or I think it was 9.15. That's a good amount. That's going to do a lot and they're donating it evenly among the people. So in conclusion, I think America has gone well past their stage of being like the big man country. It's almost like when parents are still trying to parent their child when they're age 25. It's just not going to work. They need to take a step back from the world scene and focus on rebuilding the infrastructure of their own country. I think by constantly trying to insert their own opinion of peace, America is indirectly hurting its own citizens and economy. They should retain a similar stance, in my opinion, to which they had in the pre-World War II era, in which they didn't get involved in anything unless they were targeted in a foreign affair. Pearl Harbor, the letter that was sent by Germany to Mexico to try to persuade them to invade the United States, that's when America got involved. When you said, okay, you've crossed the line, that's when we got involved and that's when it was effective. It's not effective anymore because we're trying to get involved in everything. So, yeah, in conclusion, I really think America should stop focusing on other countries who are going through conflicts and focus on the conflicts that are within their own country. Thanks for listening.