.. out that the war costs weighed more on the poor and the working class because deferments were granted to students in college and the poor and the working class could not afford to attend college. Because of presidential promises in early 1970, citizens of the US were under the impression that the war was coming to a close and that the US involvement was declining. On April 30, 1970, in a breach of the American people’s trust the US military forces invaded Cambodia.
When this hit the news in the US the people were furious and students closed down colleges across the country. These strikes in Cambodia weakened the Cambodian government and opened it up to a working class revolution that cost the lives of over a million Cambodians. The gulf of Tonkin resolution was repealed and the US military troops were limited in their actions to only South Vietnam. The official cease-fire began on January 27, 1973 and the United States promised not to increase its aid to South Vietnam. Nixon suspended the draft in favor of an all-volunteer military. This is another example of egoism displayed by the United States.
When the US decided to invade Cambodia, they did not take into account what might happen to the inhabitants of the area. They were thinking solely of what benefit it might have for the United States of America and not what the actual utility of the action might be on a global scale. They had not considered that millions of people might die as a result and the unfortunate reality of the situation is that over a million people did die as a result. In the early morning hours of October 25, 1983 the United States invaded the small Carribean Island of Grenada with 1200 troops.
They met heavy resistance from Cuban and Grenadan installments. The US force was enlarged to 7000 and within days the island fell under US control. Shortly after, the US installed a government that was not communist and Pro-US. Just weeks earlier the Grenadan Army under the leadership of the deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard seized control of Grenada in a bloody coup. Coard was a hard line Marxist and this raised concern among the population of the US because of its proximity to the US coast. Also there were some 1000 students at a medical school in Grenada.
Under the guise of a rescue for the students, the government went in and seized total control of the island in an attempt to stomp out communism in the Carribean and confront what Reagan considered to be a threat from the Soviet Union. The attack was apposed by the Organization of American States of which the US was a part. The action was also”deeply deplored” by the United Nations based on its 1970 injunction that stated that no state or group of states has the right to intervene indirectly or directly for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of another state. The United Nations Security Council voted 11-1 against the attack with the only positive vote coming from the United States.
Grenada was seen by many as a make-up war to appease the US citizens that were outraged by a truck bomb attack that killed 241 US marines in Beirut, Lebanon. The United States chose to ignore the recommendations of the organizations that it belonged to, in order to relieve its aggression on a country that was for all intents and purposes, innocent of any crime against the United States. The underlying political agenda of extracting revenge from Grenada clouded the president’s judgement in the invasion. The end of the cold war marked the end of this nation’s fear of communism. There was no more need for the United States to intervene in the affairs of other countries on behalf of democracy.
On August 2nd 1992 Iraq invaded Kuwait and seized the entire country. Immediately the president of the United States George Bush ordered an unconditional withdrawal. Why did President George Bush feel that he had the authority or the right to make such demands? It was not because Iraq had become a threat to the security of the United States, or because he feared that Iraq would grow to a point where Saddam Hussien’s regime was to powerful for the United States or the world to handle. No it wasn’t that at all.
The reason behind the US involvement is that president bush thought that he might have to pay a few cents extra for gas to fuel his Cadillacs. Because the seizure of Kuwait put Iraq in control of 20% of the oil production and reserves for the world, President Bush feared that it might have economic reprocutions for the United States. Operation Desert Storm was put into action and tens of thousands of US troops were moved into Saudi Arabia along with hundreds of aircraft. George Bush took this as a golden opportunity to assert the world influence of the United States. He was able to gain allies quickly and get most of the developed nations of the world to boycott Iraqi oil. After a quick but fierce bombing attack the war was over within 100 hours.
That wasn’t the last we were to see of Saddam Hussien though. The US still has troops in the Persian Gulf area. It is amazing to think that countries will bond together against an enemy and go to war and give their lives and the lives of their nations youth of money. Is it worth the lives of thousands of people just to keep oil costs down? It doesn’t seem to be to me. Does the world need a world police? John Locke says yes. According to Locke in the state of nature it is natural for groups of people to come together in their own self-interest, to form a society.
In these societies the surrender some of the personal rights that they had in the state of nature and delegate them to a single government. If these people were in the state of nature the might make social compacts with others. They would feel no obligation to uphold them if they no longer were of any benefit to them because there would be no consequences for breaking these social compacts. Without punitive consequences these people will only honor contracts when it is convenient for them. Locke also says that social groups will act the same way in their interactions with other social groups.
The only way to get these groups to honor social compacts is to create laws, consequences, and a body with the means and authority to enforce them. The same goes for countries on a much larger scale, because for all intents and purposes a country is just a large social group. These countries would act as individuals in the state of nature because there is no world police or authority to keep countries in line. Locke says that to get countries to work together and follow laws and honor compacts, there needs to be a single power or law-enforcing agency that acted as a worldwide administrator of discipline and law, a world police. The problem arises when one country or organization tries to assert power or force on a country when they don’t have the right to.
Locke says that in the state of nature no person or group of people is bound to any social compact that they did not enter in to knowingly and voluntarily. This means, according to Locke, that if there were to be an almighty world police then every country in the world would have to agree to wave their personal rights in the state of nature and delegate the authority to enforce laws and consequences to one individual or organization. It would be virtually impossible to get every country in the world to enter into such a social compact. Despite that the world still needs to have some sort of order among countries or some of Locke’s inconveniences will begin to arise.
