Wednesday, September 24, 2014

War with Chicago (Op-Ed)

Last week, Obama declared war on Syria to stop an organization called ISIS. He has decided to send air strikes on ISIS in order to stop them from violently killing Americans and citizens of Syria. Some may be thinking, 'Good, we need to step in and show them that no one messes with America,' but we should be thinking 'Why are we going to war?' With all the violence going on in our own country, we shouldn't even be thinking about fighting a war overseas. We should be thinking about fighting a war right here, in Chicago.

Obama wants to save others, but in order to save others, we must save ourselves first. The amount of violence in Chicago has increased substantially since last year. The murder rate in Chicago is 4 times larger than in New York and 2.5 times higher than Los Angeles. Since October 18th, there have been 419 homicides in Chicago. In the year of 2013, there was a TOTAL of 454 homicides, in which 374 people were killed by guns. The average age of people murdered were between 18 and 24 years old. This average age is also known as the common age of gang members in Chicago. If I were to turn on WGN News at Nine, I would immediately see a story about a young kid being murdered or shot and wounded in Chicago. Not only would I hear about it happening in Chicago, but also in my own town. This past summer a family, who lives near me, was robbed at gunpoint in their backyard.

Obama shouldn't be sending soldiers to fight in Syria; he should be sending them to help Chicago. He needs to send the National Guard to Chicago so they can arrest all the gang members, decreasing the amount of homicides. He shouldn't be launching air strikes on ISIS; he should be creating laws to banish guns. He shouldn't be increasing the number of soldiers heading overseas to war; he should be increasing the number of officers here, helping Chicago.

There is much that can be done to stop the violence in Chicago, but it cannot be accomplished while we are at war with Syria. If Obama is busy caring about the air strikes on Syria and plans to destroy ISIS, who will be busy caring about Chicago and destroying the gang organizations here? Yes, we have a police force here that is meant "To serve and protect us", but something just isn't working. We need to look at fixing our own cities before we head off to fix someone else's.

3 comments:

  1. Those stats about the murder rates in Chicago are so crazy. It's good that you're talking about them in such a serious light rather than making jokes about them such as "Chiraq". I totally agree that we need to work on our own country and stop the inner-wars before we go and invade other countries. Great and thoughtful post!

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  2. Although I enjoyed the article, I have a few quick critiques. Firstly, Chicago is not even in the top twenty cities for violent crime rate, which is the amount of violent crimes per capita. In face Chicago isn't even first in Illinois (it is behind Rockford and East St. Louis). Secondly, bringing in the National Guard would quite possibly make things worse, and create a blood bath. Bringing in the National Guard is implicitly supporting militaristic police which as we all know is rather horrible, also it would alienate the already alienated police force and make the citizens of the ghetto neighborhoods afraid of asking the police for help. Thirdly, the State of Illinois should be addressing the murder problem as opposed to the president because the problem is intrastate (within Illinois and that is it) and it does not involve terror organizations nor does it involve hate crimes.

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  3. I really enjoyed the your article. Its so interesting to see how many people are killed especially during the summer months, you can turn on the TV and see all the kids and teens that are killed due to gang related violence. I never knew how bad Chicago really was until now! Good article!

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