The purpose of this blog project was to develop our mental capacity as thinkers and writers while concentrating on a current issue facing our nation. Though we want to get the best possible grade in any class project, the primary goal for this particular project was to help us to develop as people and change how we take in and process information given to us.
At the end of this project, I asked myself the following questions: what have I learned, has my position on the issue been changed, and how has blogging altered me?
The Iraq war was the issue about which people were most concerned about at the start of the Presidential campaigns. However, with the introduction of the recent surge in Iraq and the economic turmoil in the US, the importance of the war to the presidential elections diminished. I primarily chose the Iraq War because I felt passionate about the topic and I was affected by a war, the Rwandan civil war in 1994. This project gave me the opportunity to better understand the reasons behind each candidate's polar opposite positions on the war, especially McCain whom I strongly disagreed with.
McCain is heavily influenced by his past as a serviceman, and so he takes the issue personally. Even though the war was unnecessary in the first place, McCain feels that now that we are there, we cannot just pull out and leave, as that would be considered a defeat. Obama, on the other hand, thinks differently. He wants to bring the troops back because he believes it is a war that we should have never got involved with in the first place.
My position on the war remains unchanged; I'm still against the war. However, I have moved passed my initial reasons because I was influenced by religious values. The project has given me the opportunity to widely view the issue and its associations, for example with the affects of the economy, better knowledge with our foreign policies and relations with other nations.
In addition, blogging introduced me to a new world, where I learnt that blogging could be very informative as it brings intellectuals together and exchange opinions based on a specific topic. My initial perspectives were that blogging was for older people, mainly talking book author. But I was a witness that this was not the case, I heavily got engaged with the project, the idea of blogging and I intend to continue visiting more blogs beyond this project.
