To yield or not to yield. That is the question

As the war in Iraq looks no closer to stopping than Derby County winning the Premiership this year, perhaps one family should be thanking their lucky stars and the 5 poor US soldiers, who were brothers, who died in 1942. Since 1942, the US army has adopted the “sole survivor” policy, which prevents a family from losing all of their children to war. Sergeant Jason Hubbard had his brother, Marine Lance Corporal Jared Hubbard die in a roadside bomb, as well as another brother, Nathan Hubbard who died in a helicopter crash. As the Hubbards mourned and rejoiced at the same time at the deaths of their sons, as well as the safe return of the other and another torn family, there is yet another war that involves the US. This time, the battlefield is not on the under-developed cities of Iraq. This time, there will be no tyrannies to target and kill. This time, the war takes place in the United States of America. On one side, we have the incumbent President of the USA, George Washington Bush and his fellow military commanders who would prefer a slow reduction and a slow handing over of power to the Iraqi Government. On the other side, we have lawmakers and the general public, who voted Mr Bush into power in 2004 rather than John Kerry.
Mr Bush’s argument for a slow reduction is that he believes that the Iraqi government, as stated in a report earlier this week, would be thrown into chaos if the US troops were to pull out. While military commanders believe that the Iraqi forces were not ready to assume full control of the situation and Iraq might go into civil war again. Also, they believed that the current Iraqi government is not yet ready to take over as they have not shown themselves capable of controlling the violence as of now. Mr Bush even likened the Iraq war to that of the Vietnam War to justify his actions of not reducing the troops and even sending in more troops. He feels that if the US were to reduce their troops now heavily, this will embolden the enemy as the US has in a way yield to their violent behavior. The counter argument is that too many lives and too many families have been torn apart from this war. The earlier the US troops pull out of Iraq, the better it is for the US as their military costs will go down exponentially and fewer lives would be lost. Also, if the US does not pull out now, then they might never do so as they will never really give the Iraqi forces a chance to show their abilities.
I feel that both sides have their points that are logical. It is true that if the US were to pull out now, terrorist forces might see this as a weakness in the US policies and there will be more terrorist attacks to force US troops out of the Middle East altogether. Then, instability will kick in as the terrorists attempt to seize control of the whole Middle East, which will put the economies and the safety of many countries at risk. However, the US has already spent too much money and lives in this war. No country likes to see itself being controlled by an external force. That may be the reason behind all the violence. If the US were to withdraw now, then there might be a chance of peace in the Middle East. The terrorists did not ask for much at first. They just wanted an Arab Empire to be controlled by Muslims only. Yet, we did not give them the chance to do so and to control their countries themselves. If there were not US troops in the Middle East, then Sep 11th might not have happened. What the terrorists are demanding is just a Middle East controlled by Muslims, and not a Middle East controlled by some guy sitting on Air Force One. If we try to let them have their way, then peace is guaranteed. However, if they go beyond this agreement, and continue their attacks to ensure that the world becomes a Muslim world, then I think that we have the justification to attack them hard. Remember, they attacked us because we are on their homeland. If we didn’t do so, innocent people would not have died. Hence, the problem rests in us, not them. If not for us, they might not have committed those insane acts to get us out of there. Hence, it is our problem, not theirs.

A case of too little, too late?

As the vice-premier of The People’s Republic of China declared a 4-month war on its home-grown products in a bid to improve the quality of the goods and to clean up China’s tarnished image on the economic front, I personally feel that this may be a case of too little, too late, or a struggle between two super-powers, the has-been and the will-be.
All across the globe, as China’s home-made products have flown far and wide from Asia, there had been constant reports questioning the quality of the goods that China has produced. There were reports from New Zealand about the so-called fire-safety clothing that China has made. Around the globe, parents were paranoid when reports came out that the Mattel toys that were made by China contained large amounts of lead. In China itself, there was a bogey report about the charsiew paos containing cardboard and meat, so as to save costs. Even though that was a fake report, it just goes to show that since news can be faked, fake food products can also exist. Since then, there has been a continuous stream of reports coming out from all corners of the globe complaining about the bad quality of the products made from China. These products range from toothpastes to beauty products to medicine and so on. Recently, the execution of a former drugs minister in China, who was convicted of being corrupt, further fuelled the belief that China’s products are not as good as the other countries in terms of quality. The case of the corrupt minister also goes to show that China officials are willing to close both eyes on a certain company’s products, be it good or bad, as long as they were paid a substantiate amount of money. This scenario is bad for the image of the manufacturing industries in China as bad products will tend to bypass the security checks and thus, the bad sheep among the herd is not picked out and affects everyone. Also, as most of China’s manufacturing industries are small companies, they are usually unregulated by officials from the government and hence, they are able to go straight into the market without any official checks. Thus, it is hard to fish out those companies that have produced those second-rate goods as they are simply too many of them to pin-point out anyone. Thus, I feel that even the best efforts of the Chinese government, providing that they are able to offer their officials a better option than to go down the path of corruption, may not be able to fish out all the bad products as China is too big, but it may be worth the effort to serve as a warning to the others.
Another point to note may be the biased view towards Chinese products. While I have to admit that these reports should be true, I would also have to point out that there is this misconception that Chinese products are not up to mark just because Chinese labour is cheap. Cheap is by no means lacking in quality. Labour is China is cheap just because the population in China is overwhelming and too many people are vying for that spot in the factories, thus salaries have to be reduced. If we are talking about cheap labour is paramount to bad quality, then what about Vietnam and Cambodia? Their labour is cheaper, if not as cheap. Yet, nobody questions the Nike shoes or the Adidas shoes that they have made. Hence, this could be an indirect battle between the US and the PRC on the economic front. The US may have been trying to slow down the economic progress of the PRC by exaggerating on some isolated cases of poor products and thus, affecting the output profit that the Chinese gain, thus affecting the economic growth of China. Though this may be one of my points of view, it is perhaps a little startling to find that most of the reports, if not all, came from the US, and its allies, in Oceania and in the EU.
All in all, this episode has not been a pleasant one to the Chinese. As they host the Olympics next year, they must tidy up their image as quickly as possible. There is no doubt that China has faced a lot of controversies in the past few years and is not far behind the US in number of controversies faced. The Taiwan issue has not been solved and then there is this worry about the safety of their products. If the Chinese do not solve these two problems soon, even a fantastic Olympics show by the Chinese may not be able to repair their tarnished image and this will result in them losing out eventually to rising powers like India.