President Obama has recently outlined a plan to withdraw the majority of United States forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan by December 2012, which would leave only a small amount of soldiers behind to maintain order in the Middle East.

This plan is simply not going to work. All of the progress we’ve made over the past ten years of fighting would be lost in probably less than a month. With no major force keeping peace in the Middle East, radical terrorist groups would seize control with virtually no resistance. The local governments would be corrupted, and entire countries would collapse under vigilante rule. Thousands would lose whatever source of food, clean water, and medical aid the USA troops have been providing since the start of the war. Any resources that would have gone to the people under American watch would be given to terrorist leaders. Power would accumulate under a few central figures; citizens of those countries would starve and be massacred. Any opposition of this new government would be killed with no fair trial. After a few years, certain countries might collapse into civil war, where hundreds of thousands could die.

Those are only the short term effects, and with no force keeping the radicals at bay, international terrorism would sky rocket. Instead of focusing on keeping their officers alive and evading total destruction by American hands, so called freedom fighters could concentrate on planning the murders of possibly millions of innocent citizens throughout the world. The death toll from these attacks would far outnumber soldier casualties had we maintained pressure on the Middle East. Buildings that cost billions of dollars to construct would become fair targets for attack. Most Middle Eastern countries would become controlled by people who can do whatever they want, with no fear of consequences. With all of the resources going to the terrorists, any revolution would almost certainly fail.

Is that what we want?

War?

Hundreds of trillions of dollars in building damage?

Thousands of civilian deaths?

If you doubt this would happen, have you forgotten what happened on September 11, 2001? How about countless other terrorist attempts? If we have no troops maintaining stability, it is very possible that car bombings in Times Square could be much more carefully planned out and possibly succeed.

Supporters of removing troops say that the local military can keep peace unassisted, when obviously they can’t. If the United States is having trouble keeping the peace, how can a much weaker government do the job any better? They argue that we would save money on war expenses. They fail to mention that it is very real that we would have to spend money to try to secure our country from attack. Or the expenses for rebuilding attack sites. They agree that the problems in that part of the world are specifically theirs. Sadly, the truth is exactly the opposite. Seeking revenge, America would probably a main target, even more so than any country in the world. Is that not our problem? Is that not why we started this war in the first place?

So this plan to withdraw troops from the Iraq and the Middle East would have disastrous consequences. President Obama should very seriously rethink his plan; he needs to see it from every aspect. He needs to consider that the risks outweigh the benefits. Sometimes the general public can only see short term, making them unable to see what is really best. If politicians gave in to every citizen want, we would all be smoking marijuana and burning tanks right now. Therefore, we need to maintain the pressure and keep up the military force we have deployed right now. It will all be worth it when we finally succeed in the end.