An Open Letter to American Citizens
Dear fellow American Citizens,
My name is Kristen and I am a Freshman at a charter school in Daly City. In my English class, we have been completing a project about war and how it can be both beneficial and detrimental to the United States. In this project, I have been learning about the different effects that war has by reading different articles and stories, and participating in debates. Our project asked us to consider the essential question, “Should the US intervene in international conflicts? And if so, at what point is intervention warranted?”I wanted to write to you, specifically, in hope that we could all group together, and with all of us together, be able to catch the attention of someone who has the power to make the change.Through this project, I realized that war is not worth all of its costs. With reading many of the articles and stories, I have realized that we should find a more peaceful way to deal with the different conflicts and disputes that the U.S. is partaking in. Back in March 15, 2011, the U.S., along with many other countries, commenced in a war with Syria, which is still going on today. With this war, an immense amount of innocent citizens that live in Syria have been killed or injured. The articles I have read about this issue have made me realize that this war is affecting everyone, and not just the people who are caught in the crossfire during the war. Therefore, the U.S. should stop partaking in war and find a more peaceful way to settle disputes, because it not only affects the people in the war, it also affects the people and environment around it.
Based on my research, I believe that the United States should put an end to wars, more specifically the war that is going on in Syria. This is important because with the United States handling disputes with war, we in turn spend an immense amount of money on weapons and through war a lot of lives are lost, so we should just pull all of the troops out of the war in Iraq entirely and try to find a more peaceful way to settle this dispute. In an article by Reuters they state, “The Observatory said it had documented the deaths of more than 321,000 people since the start of the war and more than 145,000 others had been reported as missing.” In this report we can see that with war many people have lost their lives because of the fighting. While some might say that war is needed and the United States is right to be putting the money into those programs and sending people out there to fight even though it might actually cost them their lives because they believe that it’ll benefit them more by protecting them, war actually has many downsides like environmental impact and the loss of many people’s lives. For all these reasons, I would like to offer a solution: that we all join together and make a petition to end the war in Syria and pull the troops that are still there, in hopes that we will find a more peaceful way to handle disputes like these.
Another reason why the U.S. should find more peaceful ways to settle disputes is that with war, there is an immensely harmful environmental impact. This is important because along with wars being detrimental, harming the people in it and around it, but it also damages their land, leaving them no safe place for the people who are affected to find refugee. According to an article written in 2014 by Peace Insight about the environmental impact that the Syrian War has done, they write, “Primitive extraction and refining processes by local factions in rebel-held areas are causing the spread of toxic gasses, water and soil pollution, thereby affecting local communities.” Through this quote, we could see that the war had a hazardous impact on the environment leading to soil pollution and toxic gases. Because of this impact on the environment, many of the affected people have to find a new place to live because now their environment is contaminated and not suitable to live in. With this, I would also like to stress how important it is to find a more peaceful way to settle disputes.
Finally, I hope that you will be able to join me and the others who feel the same way in the hopeful end of the detrimental ways that the United States solves conflict like war. This will make a difference because with us joining together we could hopefully get the attention of someone with the power to make executive changes to the way America handles situations and disputes. Thank you for your time and I hope to see you sometime in the future, together, to make a change.
Sincerely,
Kristen G
