Freewrite 1
February 24, 2008After completing the unit one assignment I have a few good ideas on what I want to do for my unit two assignment. In my unit one assignment I rhetorically analyzed a cartoon by Mike Peters. The cartoon dealt with American imperialism and America’s actions in Iraq. At the end of the essay I generated quite a bit of inquiries, some of the inquiries I came up with dealt with imperialism. One of the more pressing questions that I asked was “if the United States is becoming an empire, will it fall, when will it fall, and how will it fall like all empries that have come before it.” Initially I though this was the that I would like to start with in order to begin my unit two assignment. However I decided to go in a different direction and pursue another, broader, inquiry that I brought up in my unit one essay, and that question is “Why are we in Iraq?”
What really spurred me onto exploring this question was one of the sources that I used in my first assignment. It was a speech or document by Congressman Ron Paul entitled Why We Fight. The document was really a critique of American policy in the Middle East and America’s involvement in Iraq. The document talked about what seemed to be the United States and the Bush administration’s true reasons for going into Iraq. One of the reasons Paul mentioned was oil. I had always thought that oil had played a role in the war but always felt that the decision to go into Iraq was one of stupidity on the part of the administration more so than the quest for oil…perhaps I was wrong.
So I think my direction for this assignment will be somewhere along the lines of answering the question “Why are we in Iraq?” using evidence from government sources outside of the Bush administration as well as evidence from non-government sources. Also I think it would be useful to take the evidence and statements made by the Bush administration and see what truth was behind them, and analyze them using other sources from inside and outside the Administration.
I want to research this topic because there hasn’t been a clear answer as to why America is in Iraq and the current administration has never given the United States a clear answer as to why we are there. I don’t intend to answer this question completely because to get the real answer would probably require injecting our current president with truth serum. But I do intend to present a few different answers and maybe even come to my own conclusion. Not really sure but we’ll see how it goes.
I think this is going to be a really interesting paper. It’s such a good question that no one seems to have the answer to…i look forward to reading it. Good luck!
Eric. I think you made a good choice in choosing to focus on the question of why we are in Iraq rather than when and how we might fail in our imperial ventures. I actually saw a very effective cartographic map this weekend on exhibit at the Redhouse that made me realize just how plausible our interests in oil could very well be one of the main justifications for going to Iraq. I will bring in that map and the accompanying essays to you in class this week so you can see it. In terms of other research sites, I think it will be important for you to consult non-US sources on this matter, which you may try to access via the database Exalead. I think the final point you make about the Bush administration never giving us a straight answer as to why we went to Iraq is important and may actually be a good place to begin your discussion into this matter. I also like your identified strategy of comparing and contrasting U.S. government justifications for going to war. It would be very interesting here to conduct a survey here on campus as to why SU students think we went to Iraq to give you some idea of what students your age were lead to believe. We will discuss how to construct productive surveys during this unit. I’ll blog more later…Laurie
my topic is similar , but im focusing more on what the media is telling us as to why we are in iraq. i think maybe you might want to look at some of the iraqi people’s ideas as to why we are there and what they are being told by both their government and the u.s. soldiers as well. good luck!!