Kevin Edminster

12/13/2015
English 2010

Political Manifesto

When we were told that we had to choose a political issue for the our 2010
English class, I had so many different ideas about what I should choose as my
issue. I thought about maybe writing about Gun Control, NSA gathering
information on Americans, or the Health Care System but in the end only one
issue really stuck out to me, ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant). I chose to
write about ISIL and how America and the whole world have been dealing with ISIL
because I have always been fascinated with American foreign policy as well as
military issues. I have always been interested in joining the military and this
semester I started taking my ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Course) to join the
National Guard, so the idea that I might some day be deployed to fight in a region
such as Syria against a group like ISIL sparked my interested in learning more and
writing about ISIL and related issues. When I started writing papers about ISIL I
didnt have to do to much additional research because I am an avid reader of the
newspaper, as well as watching the news on TV, so I has stayed fairly current on
events having to do with ISIL. However, as the semester went on I had to do more
in depth research about very specific aspects of ISIL and the conflict in Syria. I did
this by looking online for credible sources such as The Washington Post, New York
Times, and The Guardian as well as any other sources and forms of media like
personal accounts and news broadcasts that would allow me to see a new
perspective on how people throughout the world thought ISIL should be handled.
While looking for information to use in my Position Paper, I talked to one of the
commanding officers in my ROTC program, Captain Carr, about what she thought
about ISIL. Now Captain Carr had served two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq
and she changed the way I looked and thought about the issue. Up to my
discussion with her I thought that a few airstrikes by American and allied nations
would be fine and that was all we should do but after talking to someone with

firsthand experience in combating Muslim extremists it made realize that we need

more than just a half-hearted attempt to beat them, but rather a campaign that
may involve sending a limited number of ground troops to fight ISIL on its own
turf. After that I started talking to more people in the military, especially within the
National Guard, and I found that almost every solider I talked to about it felt a
similar way about how to defeat ISIL.
Since the start of the semester when I wrote my first paper about ISIL and Syria, a
lot has happened both in Syria and around the world, that is connected with ISIL.
The biggest and most tragic event that has happened since I wrote my first paper
is the tragic mass shooting and bombing that happened in Paris, France on
November 13th. Roughly 129 people died in one night after about six gunman and
suicide bombers launched a wave of attacks all over Paris at places like a rock
concert, busy restaurant, and at an international soccer game where French
President Hollande was at. Another event that has happened is the destruction of
a Russian Airliner over Egypt caused by a ISIL bomb on-board resulting in the
death of over 200 people. Also, since I have started writing my investigative
report, more nations have joined the campaign to destroy ISIL. Notably Great
Britain decided to expand its campaign against ISIL and started launching
airstrikes against ISIL targets in Syria. Since these events form a huge chunk of
the world views and reacts to ISIL, I had to go back and revise some of my papers
with new information and included new view points from different sources. In
order to do this I needed to come up with a strategy on how to revise my papers.
To start, I went and I looked through all my papers to find any parts that may have
become outdated or the information turned out to be incorrect, such as in my
position paper where I originally had stated that Russian involvement in the
campaign against ISIL was a major step forward in defeating ISIL, however when I
started to learn about how Russia was attacking Rebels groups fighting against
their ally Bashad Assad the President of Syria, rather then targeting ISIL like they
said they would, I had to revise my paper to show the reality of what Russia was
doing in Syria. After I had rewritten parts of my paper to included my new
information I went through it and I tried to look through my paper and read it as if
I was someone else and try to find things I could fix and improve and while doing
this I tried to use the Subject Audience Purpose method of revising so I could try
to keep a clear focus on what I was trying to say in this paper. I feel that I didnt
do a very good job of remembering who my audience would be because as I wrote
it and even revised it I started to take for granted things I thought that people
would know such as acronyms or locations in Syria. When I lost track of who my
audience was, I started to lose track of the message I was trying to deliver and I
started to jump all over the place with my point, so my organization of the paper
fell apart. Since that revision, I have revised it several more times and I feel that
with these revisions I was able to do a better job of remembering who I was
writing this paper for and that allowed me to keep my information more organized
and a little bit more clear for the reader.
For our group's magazine adaptation, we decided instead of doing four separate
adaptations to do one video that included all of us and each of us talking about
our issues. When we decided to do the group video adaption we also agreed that

we would go and ask people out side of our group about our issue and ask them if
they had questions about the political issue. After talking with numerous people
we came together as a group and discussed each question that we received and
agreed on three questions for each of us that we would use in our video. Once we
had settled on the questions we were going to ask, we had to figure out ways that
we could link our issues together, such as the war on drugs in America being
linked to gun control. After we figured out and talked about how all of our issues
connected in one way or another we started working on a script and transition
from topic to topic, the group sat and talked and shared different ideas on how we
could reword the question we had so that we could smoothly transition from one
topic to another. Once we had the transitions figured out we did a couple of dry
runs where we went through our entire script without recording just so we knew
how long it would take us, as well as ensuring that we could smoothing switch
from subject to subject. Once that was done it was as easy as sitting down and
recording our group discussion just the way we had planned.
For this project I chose to use my position paper and my investigative report. The
reasons I chose to use these genres is because I felt that they both lent
themselves very well to informing the reader about my political issue. My position
paper, I felt, is a very effective genre to discuss ISIL because it allows me to write
with a basis and reflect a little bit of my own opinions because the position paper
is a chance to state how you see things in your issue and what you think can be
done to fix it. My investigative report is also a very effective genre for discussing
ISIL because it allows me to really go into depth with facts and information about
how the world has been reacting to ISIL and what more could and needs to be
done to ensure ISIL destruction. On top of them both being effective genres by
themselves they also work very well together because I am arguing for increased
action against ISIL so my position paper allows me to argue for more involvement
with an emotional appeal, where as my investigative report lets me bring facts
and information to the reader and argue for action with a reasoned and logical
argument, using logos to strengthen both my position paper and my argument.
I hope that after reading our group's magazine, the reader will be motivated to
learn more about our issues beyond what we have talked about in our video
adaptation and published magazine. The importance of being aware of these
issues, as well as any political issue, is it allows you to make informed decisions
when it comes to election time. Not only is it good to be informed for elections,
but also you know what you need to do to become an active participant in
whatever side of the issue you support. I would also like readers to know that as
they go looking for more information about any issue, they should be aware that
there is a basis in all forms of the media. In order to counteract the basis you need
to get your information from multiple different sources so that you can try to
approach the issue from a clear and unbiased direction and form your own
opinions.