The Views on Troop Withdrawal

Cassie Villari
Emily Snyder
Megan Feltz

America is a culture of differing views. In particular, we found this to be very true when comparing a Democratic, Republican and then a British view on the withdrawal of the troops.

Beginning with the Democratic side of things, the source that was analyzed was one from Politico. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66644.html#ixzz1cVadA83t) When first entering the website, the red, white and blue colors make it known it is an American website. All of the advertisements as well make it known it is for politics. The article itself spans two different pages on the website and spans 749 words. One of the reasons I believe they do this is to get more advertising out because when you go to page two it shows different ads as before. Beginning with the title, it is a known fact that Hillary Clinton stands behind Obama’s decision. This is a democratic article because it supports our democratic president. Politico has been known to be more republican than democratic recently according to Wikipedia, but after the last election it has expanded its reporters so it was more balanced. This particular article though has a very strong democratic tie. It has no criticism of the plan to withdraw the troops and only backs it up. It starts with the large image of Hillary Clinton giving a speech with the caption “Clinton stresses that a 'robust' diplomatic presence will remain in Iraq.” There is also an interview of her on the show This Week with Christiane Amanpour that is unable to copy onto the blog. Basically the article is just taking quotes from all her interviews with the news stations in the past week after the announcement was made. She is the one who has defended Obama’s decision and has taken backlash for it. Clinton believes that the war was a victory for the United States. She believes that we have a strong relationship with the new Iraqi government. The sources the quotes come from is ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Fox News Sunday, and NBC’s Meet the Press. These are all well-known sources and are all very public considering they are Sunday morning news shows. The quotes from what she says signify that she is backing up the decision to withdraw the troops.

According to the blog “Senators ask for full hearing on Iraq troop withdrawal” on thehill.com, (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/190171-senators-ask-for-full-hearing-on-iraq-troop-withdrawal) Republicans favor troops to stay in Iran following 2011 because of the ‘gains’ we have already made so far. An agreement was made that stated Americans will train the Iraqi government in the future to become better leaders, but withdrawing troops could cause this training to never happen or lag. They believe that Obama’s announcement was a serious mistake, even though Bush negotiated this agreement before he left office. Although they agree with the Democrats that we should get our troops home as soon as possible, this is not the way to go about doing so.

Conservatives argue as to why it is unnecessary to put our victories at risk that were won through the blood and sacrifice of many Americans over the past decade. According to LA Times Blogs, some republican senators state that the Iraqi people are currently too unstable for us too vacate and it may end up hurting our country in the future. Is all the fighting we did for the last decade all worth nothing? Michele Bachmann on ABC News argues that the Iraqi people have disrespected the very people that overthrew their former dictator, Saddam Hussein, and that they owe us the 700 billion we spent waging war there. She thinks that our country will be left in a fragile state after the war and we may be subject to dominance by Iran and their influence in the region.

One can tell that the blog from The Hill is a Republican blog because it used patriotic designs and colors in the layout to show that they are proud to be Americans and are proud of their country. This could lead to why the conservative side is concerned with losing all we have fought for. They also use short paragraphs to get their point across and idolize one powerful statement per paragraph. If each paragraph went into detail, it may cause the reader to skim over important sections, so it was more strategic to leave the paragraphs short and sweet. The entire blog post is short in nature because they want to leave a lot of space and opportunity for elaboration on the topic. Seeing comments from average Americans elaborating on the topic makes the blog more powerful. They included a letter from the United States Senate to make an impact on the audience, showing that the situation is real and to help justify their argument.

On Friday, October 21, 2011, a British national daily newspaper called the Guardian posted an article about Barack Obama’s announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq called “Iraq rejects US request to maintain bases after troop withdrawal.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/21/iraq-rejects-us-plea-bases) This publication is known to have a centre-left liberal alignment. In an interview, the article’s writer, Ewen MacAskill, described the left-leaning stance of the publication by saying, “there’s a difference between fairness and objectivity” (Marx). Due to this, greater editorializing is used in British news stories than national American news stories. This gives much more freedom for those writing for the Guardian, and may explain the clear stance within the article.

The title alone suggests failure on the part of Obama and the United States by using the word reject. As a subheading it also says that, “Obama announce the full withdrawal of troops from Iraq but fails to persuade Nouri al-Maliki to allow US to keep bases there.” Obama is once again but in the light of failure and disappointment, but more directly stated this time. An interesting thing to point out is the video clip places under the title, and before the beginning of the article.

The normal, unedited video of Obama’s announcement of full Iraq troop withdrawal lasts six minutes and nineteen seconds; however, the clip on the article only shows one minute and two seconds of the announcement. In the minute-long clip, Obama speaks of the promise he made during his candidacy for presidency to bring the war in Iraq to an end, and his promise to bring troops back by the end of 2011. He also states that the Iraqi prime minister and he are in full agreement about Iraqi people forging their own future, and the plans for moving forward. He says that all his promises are fulfilled. This frames Obama’s intentions in a positive light, by focusing on the fulfillment of his promise. However, it left out the details contained within the other five minutes of the speech. This may have been used to form a more balanced opinion of president Obama’s actions because the article does not put things in a positive light.

MacAskill’s article is structured with 1,005 words composed into 28 short paragraphs with a line length of approximately four inches. The conciseness of both the paragraphs and the video may be representative of the growing presence of a limited attention span in today’s culture. Short paragraphs also serve well to emphasize main points and break up a long article into more easily read sections.

Content compares Obama’s claims of success and promise fulfillment with the significance of his failure to persuade Maliki into allowing American bases in Iraq past 2011. Mostly, the article compiled many quotes of others, with small bits of statistics and opinions in between. In this normally liberal newspaper, the article seems to be written from a Republican subject position, with the emphasis of many republican opinions accompanied with support dialogue from the author. The Republican stance may show that even as a liberal, MacAskill may disagree with Obama’s measures and the reason for the withdrawal. Lack of proper negotiation and political relationships caused the rejection of American immunity, and therefore the withdrawal of troops. The time, lives, and money used up in the war were all said to be to no avail due to Obama’s lack of a relationship with Maliki.

The end of the article seems to quantify the effect of the war, and what will be needed to officially end it. Numbers serve to show the extent of the damage on human life and the economy. Once again, this emphasizes the perceived failure of Obama by showing the damage coming without any positive results.

One can see that each perspective differs favorably. The views of Republicans and Democrats can be perceived as black and white: total opposites. The British serve as an outside perspective as to what other countries think of the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The Democrats see Obama’s announcement as a victory and they commend Obama for having such great leadership skills. Republicans believe that Obama’s announcement was not a good idea and that the money, blood, and tears put into this war will all become worthless. The most drastic difference between the two views is relating to whether or not Iraq is stable enough to survive without U.S. troops there. Democrats believe that Iraq is stable and that the U.S. still possesses a strong relationship with them so they should be fine without our presence. Within their literature, they articulate a strong belief that America accomplished what they set out to do: giving Iraq the ability to run a stable government on their own. They also state that Iran is likely to stay away because troops are still going to be in the region. Republicans argue that Iraq is very unstable and if U.S. troops leave the country, prior agreements will be broken and forgotten. They even state the possibility of it coming back to haunt us in the future. The European view was expressed in the article from the Guardian. Mainly, the site is liberal, however the article came across as Republican. I believe this is because, regardless of political position, foreigners disagree with America’s influence on foreign affairs. The United States seems to meddle in disputes in other countries. MacAskill’s article emphasizes a disapproval of the withdrawal, and the waste of lives and money without an end result, just as the American Republican article emphasized. A similarity between the articles was the briefness of the paragraphs for an emphasis of main points and a greater ease of browsing for readers. Although there were a large occurrence of differences between each of the political party’s views, one other strong commonality persisted, we should get our troops home as soon as possible.

The position we are taking on this news is as follows: Politics play a big role in the beliefs of America. Whether one is Democratic or Republican, they have very different views. Obama’s six minute speech on the end of the Iraq war caused all of the articles and blogs and news reports that has lead to debate over what is actually right. No one will ever be happy with decisions in politics because of how different the views are. One person believes one thing, and their next door neighbor might disagree completely. This controlling of the news is what makes America a free country because everyone has the right to believe what they want to. And it also deals with freedom of speech because of how many different opinions have been written about this news topic. It can create controversy but that’s how America is. Democrats will continue to believe the end of the war is the right thing, while Republicans will believe the troops need to stay. When we look back on the end of this ten year war, people still 50 years from today will have differing opinions. The news is controlled by the beliefs of the people writing it.