As Commander-In-Chief, it’s my duty to preserve national security. Unfortunately, part of my job is deciding when to initiate military involvement abroad. Not only do I have serious judgments to make, I have the difficult task of convincing my fellow leaders, the international community, and you, the people, of the necessity of intervention. I don’t expect everyone to agree with my decision to engage in conflict. And if you do believe that military intervention is unjustified now, I only challenge you to ignore the horrifying instability it’s going to cause in the future.

No one can dispute that there are volatile areas in the world that pose a serious threat to global safety. Some of them may be relatively separated from us now, but I assure you, with a focused military campaign, we can make them more dangerous to us in the coming years.

My critics believe that combative action is avoidable. This may be the case now, but I’m positive that with a concerted effort, we can soon establish an area of such unrest and violence that ignoring it would be viewed unanimously as a disastrous decision.

It is imperative we enter these already war-torn regions, armed with our guns and military expertise, to tear open the fabric of society with harebrained strategies that will only fill the place with further unrest for years to come. We know that chaotic violence is a prime breeding ground for lawlessness, vicious terrorism, and opportunistic demagogues. Addressing these deadly threats is difficult, but we will come at them with the full force of our decades-long experience in exacerbating these evils.

We will destabilize these places with a shrewd and calculated strategy. We will work with dictators and leaders whom, months before, we viewed as untrustworthy and dangerous. We will train militias with whom we have no shared goals, only a common enemy, and arm these inexperienced, unprofessional soldiers with the most sophisticated military technology. Considering the disorder that accompanies such a scenario, there is practically no way to prevent these deadly weapons from falling into the wrong hands. And if these “ally” soldiers happen to win, we can be certain they will exploit their new military capabilities for their own gain; clamoring viciously for power against any adversary trying to squeeze into the vacuum of power we’ve helped leave behind.

It is essential that we work with local authorities to hunt down terrorists in hasty, careless ways that make civilian casualties a near certainty. Our indiscriminate use of airstrikes, artillery, and military ambushes will cast a mortal paranoia in which no person feels safe in her city or home. With our innovative tactics, we can expect all doctors, engineers, and skilled professionals to flee the region, leaving behind physical and institutional damage that will take years to repair. The ravages of violence from our successful campaign will traumatize the battered region for generations—thereby producing a small, but hostile population that will thrive in a structure-less society, eventually pulling us into bloody military engagement once again.

If I could avoid this war, I would. However, the spreading unrest in the region is too great to ignore, having been copiously fueled by the policies of bold leaders before me. If it wasn’t for the meddlesome military action of my predecessors, I would not be speaking to you today. Many men have come before me to intervene in a place of which they knew very little to inflict trauma, cripple economic advancement, and uproot society as a whole. I merely continue a tradition for which numerous leaders deserve credit.

If it weren’t for these steadfast leaders, the children who endured the horrors of yesterday’s wars would never have become today’s international crises. We too must assure that today’s youth have the tools and experience necessary to become full, global threats when they grow to ripe, gun-firing age.

With your support, we can reserve our special place in history in the self-fulfilling prophecy that is interventionist violence.

Not that anyone has a choice.