Analysis of the 2003 iraqi invasion.IntroductionThe history of the 3rd Persian Gulf War (The Iraq War) will be our starting point for this discussion. On March 19, 2003, American and British forces began the Third Persian Gulf War, a conflict that may become popularly known as the “Gulf War 2”.
This conflict is by far the first truly major war of the 21st century. The United States, Great Britain, Australia, Poland, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qutar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) were involved. These nations United to combat the Iraq, Ansaral-Islam (supporters of Islam) and Komala Islamic Kurdistan (Islamic society of Kurdistan).The war began on March 19, 2003.
The reasons for the second major war between a United States and Iraq are very diversified. First, there was the lingering tension and hostility left over from the Gulf War of 1991, in which Iraqi occupation troops were forced out of Kuwait. As a result of this war, the Iraqi government agreed to surrender and destroy several types of weapons, including SCOD missile and various weapons of mass Destruction (WOMDS). The UN was allowed to send weapon inspectors to confirm the destruction of Iraq weapons and also to search for prohibited weapons believed to be in hiding.
Also, two “No fly zones” were established over northern and southern Iraq for the protection of Iraq minority groups in opposition to the Saddam Hussein government. Over these two zones, allied aircraft patrolled the air in order to prevent Iraqi aircraft from attacking northern Kurds or southern Shiites. Over the years Iraqi-air-defense forces fired missiles and other weapons at the Allied warplanes (mostly American and British planes). In unsuccessful attempts to shoot-down, allied warplanes often responded by bombing the air-defense sites and the radar installations associated with them.
The second reason was the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001. After this attack president George W. Bush implied Iraqi connection with al-Qaida using the potential threat of Saddam-supplied weapons of mass Destruction in the hands of terrorists. The US government increasingly insisted on total Iraqi disarmament.
With initial backing by the UN security council, the US encircled Iraqi with growing military forces a move that lead to Iraq permitting UN weapons inspectors back into the country. By early 2003, however, the US and British government claimed that Iraq wasn’t cooperating fully with the UN inspectors and on Monday March 17 2003 president Bush issued an ultimatum for Saddam Hussein and his sons to enter into exile within 48 hours or face military conflict. On Saddam’s refusal, Bush ordered the war to begin.Cite-The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2003 by George Horace Gallup.
According to Gallup Poll, Analysis show that 59% of Americans were in favor of invading Iraq with ground troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power. These polls were supported by the US Secretary of State Collin Powell, during his UN speech arguing for military action against Iraq. Other polls conducted after February 24-26 just after the prior president George W Bush’s national address on Iraq show support of 51% citizens. The factors affecting support of citizens for war was if the United Nations would approve and support military action against Iraq.
Statistics show 40% of the US citizens would support the war if UN approves it while 38% would support the war with or without UN approval. Another factor that influenced domestic politics is the disagreement by Iraq to comply with the demand of destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles. Lastly the factor that demanded change of the corrupt regime whose infrastructure supported terrorism and was headed by president Saddam Hussein. This was likely to increase the percentage of those in favor for invasion3.
Looking at the historical analysis, the Arab countries were not for the support of America attack of Iraq. According to the Arabs, an American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen as an imperial reach into the Arabs’ world a favor to Israel and also as a way of controlling Iraq’s oil. When viewed in the historical con text, the overall US security policy’s stated objectives turned out to be merely the military tools of securing vital US security and economic interest in the region. As the war in Iraq had ended, and the US forces managed to achieve their regime change objective, this is seen by the fact that the grounds that the US forces in Iraq have been unable to unearth any biological or chemical WMDs or any production-related infrastructure.
In a recent television interview, president Bush himself had admitted this fact, which explicitly confirms the stated position of the chief UN weapon inspector, Dr. Hans, Blix, on the eve of US invasion, that he hadn’t found any WMDs in Iraq. It leads to a conclusion that the search for WMDs was not the real US objective but was used as a pretext to achieve other aims such as the control of Iraq oil resources4.Looking at global powers historical quest for the control of oil resources, we recall that Britain, which was then an imperial power despite being in control of the resources in Iran, was still desperate to capture the potential oil resources such as in the Mesopotamia region (Iraq), then under the Ottoman Empire.
Other reasons why US went to war in Iraq was to control over oil resources to present global power status and due to the technological revolution since the twentieth century hence an increasing need for oil as a source of energy. This is why most of the there is constant problem of energy crisis worldwide.The point of safeguarding Israeli security is another reason for US warring with Iraqi. US struggled to safeguard Israeli because it is the only and main US ally in the region.
According to America’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, he believed that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil. This is because Greenspan, who was 81 years, understood that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East. [1]For at least 500 years the eastern boundary of what is now Iraq has been of the Middle East’s great dividing lines. For centuries this boundary has separating empires, civilizations and the two main branches of Islam.
Twenty five years ago, a dispute over the location of a small part of the boundary, whether it should go in Tal weg of the shatt al-arab as the Iranians wanted or the eastern shores as the Iraqi’s wanted. This war lasted eight years and killed millions of people. It is the first war to use extensive chemical weapons since World War 1. In his book ‘the end of Iraq’, Galbraith shows us how Iran is taking over Iraq after the war in 2003.
Some of the examples are the Iran running the hit squads inside Iraq; assassinating those they believe are responsible for some of excesses of the Iran- Iraq war. After the war Iraq is adopting a constitution while the US is using its might to promote a centralized Iraqi state and bring it in full control of Iraqis financial resources (oil) and with a single military squad to operate throughout the country. Due to the military control the Iraq Kurds are at war with the US government. They also insist on having control over the share of the oil.
Another problem is that the US government is not solving the Iran dictatorial over Iraq.For years the Americans supported Saddam Hussein to oppress his own people and fight neighboring countries. Now the very same allies are against Hussein during the 2003 war. Examples of these events the allies supported Sadaam include, to control Middle East oil from world war two to 1998.
The US encouraged war, helped install dictator Hussein and supplied them with billions of dollars of weaponry. In the 1980s, the US corporations supplied Iraq with biological, chemical and nuclear components. Cited from Polly Kellogg, Drawing of history to Challenge the war by US government, attempts were seen on encouraging Hussein to invade Kuwait because then the US military would have an excuse to get a long – desired base in the oil- rich Saudi Arabia. Falsehood also used by the US generals showing the Saudi monarchy falsified satellite photos of the Iraq troops poised to attack the Saudi border in order to get the Saudis to accept a US military base5.
Consequences of conflict. First, prior to the outset of the war, the Anti-war movement in North America and Europe grew and conducted many large – scale demonstrations against president Bush of the plans for war. Secondly, in the United States, a well-organized pro- war movement were formed in order to challenge the anti – war activities and to support the president of the US. Military.
More so, Saddam Hussein recognized leader of Iraq since 1978, lost power. Lastly even though major combat ended as declared by President Bush on May 1st 2003 the escalating Guerilla war damaged American public rule in Iraq killing and wounding many people. Statistics from three worlds Health Organization estimates that 100,000 Iraqi civilians were wounded and another 400,000 hit by disease after the bombing of water and sewage facilities and the disruption of food supplies. Another outcome of the war was a mushrooming demand for satellite dishes for the Arabs.
This is because during Saddam Hussein’s rule, the satellite dishes had been banned. The only dominating station at that time was the Arabic Aljazeara, which became internationally famous as it covered the US war against Afghanistan and Iraq in the after math of September 11, 2001. This information is cited from Al – Hail, Ali (2000). The age of new media: The role of Al-Jazeera satellite TVs in developing aspects of civil society in Qatar.
Destruction of property worth of shillings and disruption of schooling activities was realized.The history of American’s fighting record since the beginning has been based on the seven principles. This has contributed a lot to the domestic politics and the last of the foreign wars has affected Bush administration in the years 2002 and 2003.Congressional study shows that there has scarcely been a year since its founding that America soldiers have been overseas ”from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” chasing pirates, punishing bandits, pulling America citizens out of harm’s way, intervening in civil wars, stopping massacres, overturning regimes deemed unfriendly and exporting democracy.
America foreign policy largely consists of doctrines about when and where to intervene in other people’s countries. Examples of these situations as cited in 1823, James Monroe committed the United States military, to keeping foreign colonial powers out of the entire Western Hemisphere. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt added a corollary giving the United States the right to send its troops when any of its Latin American neighbors engaged in ”flagrant wrongdoing.” Most Latin Americans, then and now, took that to mean that the United States would topple any government in the hemisphere that acted against American interests.
Early in the last century, American troops went ashore to set up governments in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and chased Pancho Villa around Mexico. Twelve thousand troops were sent to support the White armies fighting the Communists in the Russian Civil War that began in 1918. In the 1920’s, during the civil war in China, there were 6,000 American soldiers ashore and a further 44 naval vessels in the China Sea protecting its interest. When the Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest, Eisenhower turned a deaf ear as the Hungarians begged over the airwaves for American help.
Ike decided that intervention that risked nuclear conflict with a great power was not worth the candle. Despite George Washington’s call to avoid foreign entanglements and John Quincy Adams’s plea that America should abjure slaying monsters abroad, splendid isolation has never proved to be a convincing foreign policy for Americans. First in 1917 and then again in 1941, American presidents thought they could keep America out of Europe’s wars only to discover that isolation was not an option for a country wanting to be taken seriously as a world power which, from the beginning, is precisely what America desired. Intervention required huge sacrifice.
The haunting American graveyards in France are proof of this. American soldiers helped save Europe from dictatorship, and their hard fighting turned America into the most powerful nation on earth.American soldiers on guard around the world to defend free governments from After World War II, the boys may have wanted to come home, but Truman kept Communist overthrown. This meant shoring up the Greeks in 1947 and sending troops to prevent South Korea from going under in 1950.
But anti-Communism had its limits. It did not mean going to the aid of the Hungarians when they rose up against Soviet domination in 1956. When the Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest, Eisenhower turned a deaf ear as the Hungarians begged over the airwaves for American help. Ike decided that intervention that risked nuclear conflict with a great power was not worth the candle.
Another rule in American interventions is when force is used as a last resort. Since the Clinton administration’s interventions did not necessity protect the national interest that was at the time by matters of choice, this made a certain amount of crises at least in terms of domestic politics. For example Clinton made force protection as important as mission accomplishment and may have sent the wrong signal to the enemy. By cutting and running after the botched intervention in Somalia in 1993, for instance, Clinton might have led Osama bin Laden to believe that Americans lacked the stomach for a fight.
Ten years later, America may still be paying the price for that mistake6.By the end of the 1990’s, conservative commentators were complaining that Clinton’s intervention doctrine had lost touch with national interest and had degenerated into social work. Then came Sept. 11 and then came first Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Now the Bush administration was committing itself to use force as a first resort. The Bush administration is committed to absolute military pre-eminence. The Bush doctrine is also burdened with contradiction. The president took office ruling out humanitarian interventions, yet marines did finally go ashore in war-torn Liberia.
During the 2000 campaign, George Bush ruled out intervention in the cause of nation building, only to find himself staking his presidency on the outcome of nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq. Having called for a focused intervention strategy, he has proclaimed a war on terror that never clearly defined terrorism; never differentiates among terrorist organizations as to which explicitly threaten American interests and which do not; and never has settled on which states supporting or harboring terrorists are targets of American intervention. The administration, does not, routinely conflates terrorism and the nuclear threat from rogue nations. These are threats of a profoundly different order and magnitude.
Finally, the administration promises swift and decisive interventions that will lead to victory. But as Afghanistan shows and Iraq is beginning to show, this expectation is deluded. The Bush administration has no administration before it. It has embraced ”pre-emption.
” It is a strategy of sorts, but hardly a doctrine. A definition of where pre-emption may be justified should be shown. As for the fail of the bush war in Iraq, it should be publicly announced. As Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush administration’s deputy secretary of defense, has candidly acknowledged, the intelligence evidence used to justify force in Iraq was ”murky.
” If so, the American people should have been told just that. Instead, they were told that intervention was necessary to meet a real and imminent threat.[2]Iraq invasion was derived from earlier strategies in this account. The main reason was if the Saddam Hussein regime was allied with Al Qaeda.
The Bush Administration in order to build an argument that the Hussein regime should be overthrown using military action. The United State asserted that Iraq constituted a gathering threat to the United States because it continued to develop weapons of mass destruction that it could potentially transfer to international terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda with which Iraq was allied in the administration view. This combination produced the possibility of a catastrophic attack on the United States, according to the Bush administration. The second reason is that Iraq has continued an active development of weapon of mass destruction.
These weapons are moreover placed on the wrong hands these being terrorist. The Iraq war is therefore justified because it helps disarm the corrupt government of the weapons of mass distraction and to cut their connection with terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. According to the seven basic principles of a just war, cited from Bruce Jentleson, With friend like Theoe, the war seems justified because, It has legitimate authority which requires that only legitimate officials can decide to resort to force as a way of protection against three standards of self –defence, recovery of stolen assets and punishment for wrong doing. It should have peaceful intentions where by, it should aim at achieving peace and minimized use of force.
ConclusionThe last resort, if all other means of solving the problem have failed then war can be employed for a solution. Another principal is applying a reasonable hope of success. This is seen when people go to war and there should be reasonable expectations of successfully obtaining peace and reconciliation between the warring parties. The principle of proportionality, which is the suffering, and devastation of war must not out weigh the benefits of the results of war.
Lastly the principle of discrimination or non-combatant immunity, which means warfare, must discriminate between comb ants and non-combatants. BIBLIOGRAPHYhttp://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030101faessay10218/fouad-ajami/iraq-and-the-arabs-http://www.
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