Multi Modal Essay

Taylor Wisnieski

11/6/11

Professor Lutz

Multi Modal Essay

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan

             September 11, 2001 will be a day that no one will ever forget. On this day 19 militant hijackers associated with the Islamic extremist group, al-Qaeda, high jacked  four airplanes. Two of the planes were flown into the Twin Towers, one was flown to Washington D.C and hit the Pentagon, and the last one ended up in a field in Pennsylvania. During this attack over 3,000 people were killed and four hundred of those were fire fighters and police officers. Now, ten years later, our president, Barack Obama has announced the ending of the war all together. Before I go any further, I came across a youtube video from 2008 that discusses President Obama's decision to end the war by 2010. This video was from three years ago but what he says is going to happen during the process of ending the war is exactly what is happening now, only a year after he planned on having all troops out of Iraq.  

                                           

Ending of the Iraqi War

       This just proves that though President Barack Obama had the intentions of ending the war a year ago he was a little late. When President Obama was elected into office in November of 2008, he declared three months later that by the summer of 2010 our troops would be brought home. When the summer of 2010 came Obama's opinion changed completely and he was quoted saying, "time to turn the page" on Iraq and put the focus back on building back up the United States. The only problem I see is that the U.S made the decision to involve itself in the problems Iraq is experiencing with its government and now our president can't decide whether to bring the troops home or worry about our economy here. Now that Osama bin Laden is dead our troops have no reason to be there anymore and should have been brought home after his death because since then more people have been killed and Americans have spent more money on nothing. The thing that worries most Americans is that if in 2008 when President Obama told us he was bringing our troops home by the summer of 2010, how can we believe him now when he says that our troops will be home by the end of this year? While asking myself this question I did some research and though our troops will be leaving Iraq they may be sent to Afghanistan where there is still currently a war between the U.S and Afghanistan. Now that Obama has plans on bringing our troops home from Iraq he has other things to deal with in Afghanistan, he has pledged to end U.S combat roll in Afghanistan within three years. October 7, 2011, the U.S led war in Afghanistan marked its 10th year, having passed two milestones: The Taliban has been forced out of power and Osama bin Laden is dead. Though our troops have been in Afghanistan for ten years, there's no sign of our troops coming home any time soon. Lately there have been many high-profile attacks, such as, the assassination of Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani last month. With these types of attacks still happening in Afghanistan it is raising many questions by the U.S and is jeopardizing our peace negotiations with the country. Rabbani was killed by a Taliban negotiator who he was supposed to meet with in Kabul. This attack became a reminder that the Taliban regime, who the U.S has been trying to topple for the past 10 years, is still capable of carrying out strikes in even the most fortified sections of the capital. This killing very well may keep our troops in Afghanistan even longer.

The Taliban

          With Presient Rabbani dead, the Taliban now has the opportunity to take over the Afghan government and many western leaders do not doubt that this will be the case. Taliban, are students of religious seminaries who have existed in Afghanistan long before modern schools existed. The beginning goals of the Taliban were to disarm the country, end lawlessness and enforce the Islamic law on a united Afghanistan. In June of 2011, the International Crisis Group reported that the Taliban had expanded in the south and southeast to central-eastern provinces. This is just proof that the Taliban is capable of expansion and of being in control of other countries. The Taliban are people who most are afraid of because of how powerful they are and how they are not scared of killing people. Pictured below is of Taliban insurgents in front of a burning German military vehicle in northern Kunduz Province. 

The war between the U.S and Afghanistan has now become a war between the United States and the Taliban. The Taliban is now recruiting non-Afghan soldiers to fight against our American soldiers.Having this Taliban influence in Afghanistan is only causing more pain and trouble for the people of Afghanistan and it's only getting worse. Corruption and cooperation with the Taliban reach the highest levels of local governance. Widespread abuse of power from simple shakedowns to outright collusion with the Taliban will very likely outlive U.S military combat. Also having a reconciliation between the U.S and Afghanistan will be hard to achieve after nine years of war (Cohen 11). As Afghanistan is failing to do any better, Obama tries to shed some light on these problems by proving that the military has done a great job in Afghanistan and that they are ready to be brought home. In my opinion I think that our troops should have been sent home a long time ago and that since we have been in Afghanistan and Iraq we have only made problems worse. It's not our job to be involved in another country's problems when we should be worrying about our own here, like our economy and how it's falling.

Treatment of Soldiers

  This brings me to another problem that not just me but most American's are having with our troops being in Afghanistan and Iraq, the way they are being treated there and when they return home. "In a 2006 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it was found that one-third of US military personnel from the war in Iraq accessed mental health services after they returned home. Among 222,620 Iraq veterans, 31 percent had at least 1 outpatient mental health visit within the first year postdeployment, while the annualized rate of such services was 35 percent.”(Mitchell 2). This statistic stuck out to me because it's clear that soldiers who came back with PTSD did not always receive the treatment they needed. This also shows that many troops are coming back with PTSD and not many of them are getting help. Thinking more about this situation I came across a study of troops returning from Iraq or Afghanistan who have experienced some form of PTSD, whether it be alone or the problems they have had in relationships or parenting since returning. In this study, the participants who have children reported significant concerns about impairments in parenting. These participants then went on to say they would rather go through family therapy instead of therapy alone, in order to deal with the PTSD together (Daniel 49). I enjoyed reading about this study because it showed that troops with families are more willing to get help so they don't ruin relationships between them and their family. As I was thinking to myself about the treatment of these soldiers when they return home I knew I'd have to do research on how they were being treated overseas. I came across an article where a doctor was quoted saying, “Pain needs to be consistently assessed and treated all the way across the continuum of care, from that initial point of injury all the way down the road.", he later went on to say that as of lately the methods of treating and following a patient from the time of injury until they are fully healed has been lacking. If any other person experienced an injury such as tearing your ACL, they would be at the doctor continuously until they were completely healed, so my question is why should it be any different for soldiers? Just because they are coming back from a different country doesn't mean their care should stop once they return to the U.S. 

Continuing War in Afghanistan

       Though the war in Iraq will be coming to an end by December of this year, the war in Afghanistan will still be continuing for the next three years. As I was thinking to myself about how if the troops in Iraq are able to be sent home why can't the troops in Afghanistan be sent home I found a video from May of this year petitioning the end of the war. This video was made after Osama bin Laden's death.

                                                          

I completely agree with these people who are trying to petition the end of the war, I never once thought our troops should even be in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. I never saw the point in reacting to the terrorist attacks in the first place, yes hundreds of people in the U.S died from the attack but what gives us the right to go and kill their people? It makes us look just as bad as them, clearly we are no better than the Iraqis or the people of Afghanistan. When President Bush sent us to Iraq to help "create" a government for their people he was stepping on their territory and that is why they've reacted so negatively towards us, because it's not our place to fix another country's problems. Since being in the war we have spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of U.S citizens and what can we say we've accomplished really? We have attempted to establish a government in another country that isn't our own while our economy here is diminishing. While thinking about how I felt I had to do research on how other people felt and I came across a quote from an article that really stood out to me, "...there is little reason to believe that the continuing commitment of tens of thousands of troops on a sprawling nation-building mission in Afghanistan will make America safer." I agree with this 100%, nothing we are doing over there is making here any safer. We have more important needs at home like high unemployment and the flood of foreclosures while we are spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan. After everything our country has been through I think it's finally time to get our troops home.

Works Cited

Daniel W. King, et al. "PTSD Symptom Increases In Iraq-Deployed Soldiers: Comparison With

             Nondeployed Soldiers And Associations With Baseline Symptoms, Deployment 

             Experiences, And Postdeployment Stress." Journal Of Traumatic Stress 23.1 (2010):

             41-51. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2011.

COHEN, MICHAEL A. "Afghanistan: What Can We Achieve?." Dissent (00123846) 58.1 

               (2011): 9-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.

Blog #15

Blog Article #1
       The topic I chose was the war in Iraq because I think there is a lot of controversy going on about this topic. The one blog article I found was a blog from The New York Times, the blog talks about how the plain old headache has been a leading cause of attrition in units deployed to Iraq in Afghanistan. The author of this article is, James Dao. The argument made in this article is that the Kevlar helmets the soldiers wear on their head every day weigh about 3 pounds and put pressure on the occipital nerve in the back of the head. Also a study found that neurological illness was among the top three causes of noncombat related evacuations from war zones, and that headaches were the most common neurological complaint for those evacuees (Dao). I think that this blog article has ethos in it, since it is coming from The New York Times it is easy for a person to believe what they are saying because they are a well known credible newspaper. It also has pathos because it appeals to the reader's emotions, when they begin talking about why soldiers come home with headaches that may eventually turn into other things wrong with the brain, people start to listen more because they feel sorry for them. This blog article is different than anything I've read because it really showed an importance on how serious head injuries are to men and women who are in the army.

Blog Article #2
     The second article I found came from the author Curtis Silver, where he talks about Obama and how his administration is trying to have all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of this year. The one quote that stuck out most to me in this article actually came from Obama himself, "The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq" (Silver). This stuck with me to think that there have been troops in Iraq for years now and so many people are still going to be sacrificing their lives for our country when the war is no longer going on. This article is so much different than the other ones that I have read because it is very blunt on the issues at hand. Later into the article it tells us that though troops may be withdrawing from Iraq they will now be going to Afghanistan where there's a lot of conflict right now. 


Blog Article #3
      The next article I found was actually again about Obama and how he is trying to dismiss as many troops as he can. Yet this article goes on to explain that though troops may be leaving, about 49,700 of them are still staying in Iraq and remain on a "advise and assist" base. The author of this blog is Katy Stoddard. This article stood out to me most because even though they are sending some troops home they are still keeping the majority of them there even though there is no more war. This article definitely appeals to the rhetorical appeal pathos, which is the appeal to the emotion of what you are reading. I think this article definitely appeals to the reader's emotions because it makes them sad to think that many of the troops in Iraq really won't be coming home.

Blog #14

      While reading What We're Doing When We Blog I found two hotspots that were interesting to me. The first one i found interesting was when it said, "The articles' authors are rarely webloggers themselves, which places them in the unenviable position of describing and defining weblogs based on observations, not experience." (Melzer 294). This was interesting to me because someone else is trying to describe a weblog that they did not write just off of an observation which could very well be a wrong observation of what the weblogger is trying to say.
       Another hotspot I found to be interesting was, that in a blog you will always find the most recent information at the top of the page. It's kind of like a newspaper where the most recent and important information will be on the front page. It goes on to explain that they do this because it allows the reader to find the most important information without having to search for it. Also if new content has been added it's easy to see as soon as the page is loaded. By having these things it sets up an expectation that the readers will return to see what else is new since they were last logged on.

Blog #14

      While reading What We're Doing When We Blog I found two hotspots that were interesting to me. The first one i found interesting was when it said, "The articles' authors are rarely webloggers themselves, which places them in the unenviable position of describing and defining weblogs based on observations, not experience." (Melzer 294). This was interesting to me because someone else is trying to describe a weblog that they did not write just off of an observation which could very well be a wrong observation of what the weblogger is trying to say.
       Another hotspot I found to be interesting was, that in a blog you will always find the most recent information at the top of the page. It's kind of like a newspaper where the most recent and important information will be on the front page. It goes on to explain that they do this because it allows the reader to find the most important information without having to search for it. Also if new content has been added it's easy to see as soon as the page is loaded. By having these things it sets up an expectation that the readers will return to see what else is new since they were last logged on.

Blog #13

Chapter 5 in the Pearson text is mostly about exploratory essays. The text also talks about annotated bibliographies and how they along with exploratory essays serve as an intermediate stage in the research process. While reading I found an important rule to writing exploratory essays, "The essential move for exploratory thinking and writing is to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view". This reminded me of when I had to write my exploratory essay and while writing it I had to search for many solutions to the problem at hand, I couldn't just have one solution because people would get bored with it then. Another important factor I found in writing an exploratory essay is, "The key to effective exploratory writing is to create a tension between alternative views". I found this significant because you can't just have one view towards the issue you are writing about, you have to show people that you are open to changing your opinion on it. It may be easy for a person to write just through their own opinion but it challenges the writer to look more in depth into the issue and allow themselves to maybe change their opinion after doing research.

While reading chapter 9 I found a couple of things that stuck out to me as they were talking about citation. The first thing that stuck out to me was when they were talking about attributive tag method. This is where you place the author's name at the beginning of what you are citing and the page number at the end. I think this is useful because you are citing while not having to follow the real guidelines to citing in a paper. The second thing that stuck out to me was, how to cite when there are 4 or more authors. I didn't know how to do this in the past so when I read about it I finally learned how to properly cite it. When you are citing 4 or more authors you put the first two authors then et al. afterwards.

Blog #11

I found rhetoric in advertising.




-The first picture is to show censorship and how there are things people aren't allowed to say so that's why his mouth is covered.
-The second picture is more of a visual pun with all of the man's body being different fruits and vegetables.

Blog #10

My question for the exploratory essay was: What are the effects of lowering the drinking age to 18 years old?

October 2

Journal Article

Source #1
Wechsler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson. "Will Increasing Alcohol Availability By Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Decrease Drinking and Related Consequences Among Youths?." American Journal of Public Health 100.6 (2010): 986-992. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Oct. 2011.


This article talks about the risks of lowering the drinking age to eighteen years old and if it will increase the amount of alcohol available to youths. They also discuss whether this will decrease the drinking related consequences among youths or will it increase the consequences.


"Since 1984 the national legal drinking age in the United States has been 21 years"



"The lower minimum legal drinking age was followed by increases in the sale and consumption of alcohol and in alcohol-involved traffic fatalities, particularly among young adults aged 18–20 years"



"Approximately three quarters of college students aged 18–20 years drank alcohol in the past year"


The article then goes on to talk about the statistics behind lowering the drinking age. There are some statistics that show that when the drinking age was lowered there were less alcohol related deaths because teens would drink responsibly. Later into the article they talk about college students and how they binge drink, which proves that teens under the age of 21 still drink heavily in the college environment. I believe that this article tries to show you the good and the bad of lowering the drinking age to 18, which is a good thing because people need to see both sides of it.


Source #2
Streeter, Ruth. "The Debate on Lowering the Drinking Age." CBS News 01.Mar.2010. n. pag. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. 


News Article


"When the age was raised to 21 in the mid-1980s, the goal was to reduce highway fatalities. But everyone knows that the 21 age limit hasn't stopped minors from drinking. And now some experts believe it's actually contributing to an increase in extreme drinking."


"Asked what the advantage is to lowering the age to 18, Beckner said, "The overall advantage is we're not trying to enforce a law that's unenforceable. The abuse of alcohol and the over-consumption of alcohol and DUI driving. Those are the areas we've gotta focus our efforts. Not on chasing kids around trying to give 'em a ticket for having a cup of beer in their hand."


This article is mostly about people who are in favor of lowering the drinking age. I agree with the first quote though that teens under the age of 21 drink to an extreme because they are not allowed to drink at the bars so they will get drunk before they go out but they will do it quickly which is extreme drinking. Later into the article they discuss a boy in a fraternity who had died from alcohol poisoning because the fraternity was going through their "hazing" stage of recruitment. The parents of the boy who died said they think that if the drinking age was 18 the boys in the fraternity would have called the police instead of leaving the boy to die on the couch. This article makes very good points on what could be different if the drinking age was lowered.