Iraq War
The Iraq War commenced in 2003. This war has been the largest and the longest that the US military has ever engaged in since the Vietnam War. The biggest question has been: was the Iraq War worth it? This paper will actually present an analysis that proves that the Iraq War was actually worth it.
Iraq war and Theories of Conflict
Conflict has several causal influences as there are various perspectives that govern conflict. These include realism, influence of ideology, liberalism, elite interests and even personal and social psychology (Gallagher 112).
The realism perspective comes out largely in the Iraq war. It can be seen that with the September 11th attacks, the US suffered greatly. There was, therefore, great need for the US to demonstrate to the whole world that it was still powerful and it could use force if need be.
This could be seen perhaps as a way of maintaining hegemony. Another realistic perspective could be seen from the need for the US to attack so as to avoid nuclear proliferation and other deadly weapons that Saddam was suspected to have been developing. Also US had to secure its oil supplies. With opposition and suspicion from Saddam, the steady supply of this commodity was not guaranteed.
There was therefore a realistic need to make sure that Saddam did not threaten the US sources of this great commodity. From the realist policy as will be seen later, collective force serves as a hindrance to achievement of certain goals. The US government, after the post Cold War period, did not change its budget towards military (Segell 111). This was meant to surmount any combined force that may oppose the US in the future.
Also by opting for war the US has managed show to the world it is actually a super power, something that was almost in question after the 9/11 attacks. So this message went far and wide, thus boosting further US reputation (Downing 44).
It seems that this war was based on liberalist perspective since the war was pegged on democratizing Iraq. It has been noted that democracies hardly attack other democracies.
In fact, the crusaders of this school of thought do believe that it is also against this backdrop that the US feared that, Iraq, then a non-democracy, would use its oil influences to influence other non-democracies and even democracies to attack the US and its allies.
This is also why the US, in attacking Iraq, did not trust that the UN inspectors were going to achieve anything much on the global front. In fact, they feared that the regime would hide the truth and that after sometime Saddam would have managed to develop fully weapons of mass destruction. By this it was worth going to war early than rely on the slow and ineffective methods proposed.
Argument
The US has its foreign policy to pursue. The US is facing many challenges in ensuring that its security is guaranteed. A nation therefore takes itself powerful when its security is assured. The political environment internationally required that it goes for this war since there were some threats posed by the Saddam Hussein’s regime as there was a growing level of hostility.
Before a country goes to war it therefore considers the costs and benefits. Though the Iraq war was too costly to the US, some people feel that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein.
This, therefore, transcends all the money that went into it. It is indeed premature for many to say that the war was wrong. Some ardent supporters of the war say that there were some groups such as the Kurds and Shia that really suffered worse atrocities during Saddam’s reign.
Several critics, alleges that US paid a big price through the loss of lives of over 4400 soldiers, among the trillion dollars expended in the war. But the war that the US engaged in Korea, the Korean War, left over 3600 dead. Few would have seen the benefit of this war. But now, decades later, many can see that it is in these countries in which freedom and prosperity reign.
This should not be seen to suggest that the Iraq case will conclude in a similar manner. However, all indications show that there is some hope that democracy is now being embraced slowly in Iraq (Stewart and Carlisle 120).
Sanctions seem not to be effective while dealing with rogue regimes. In fact the “Arab Spring” has shown that most regimes in the region have been repressive and that the citizenry is now standing up. In cases where such homegrown uprising could be cracked down ruthlessly, there is a clear indication that there is the need to use external military action to emancipate the populace.
Now, the Iraq Kurds have managed to gain some level of recognition. With own semi-autonomous state, they can now benefit from their region; something that they never used to be imaginable during Saddam’s regime? The Shia, on the other side, has equally managed to benefit from freedom.
According to Pollack (20) Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had some links to the al-Qaeda affiliate group named Jund-al-Islam, which later on changed its name to Jund-al- Islam. This group acted as a proxy for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which was considered a terrorist group. In fact there were credible intelligence reports from US and Israeli agencies that Iraq did exchange service such as forged passports for terrorist elements.
The terrorists would use the Iraq authorities to do this. There was also credible intelligence that the Iraqi authorities did cooperate and eventually agreed to consolidate their strategies towards fighting common enemies. Among their synergies towards fighting common enemies was the United States.
What only worked against this kind of cooperation was the fact that Saddam had killed so many Muslim clerics that the al-Qaeda leadership privately detested him. Saddam was actually an avowed secularist whose pursuit was to handle different opposition groups during his leadership (Pollack 26).
He did not wish to have any authority that threatened to be critical of his leadership to prosper. According to a former US intelligence chief, the number one concern against Iraq leadership was terrorism, nothing else.
After the September 11th attacks there was actually need for the US to try hard enough to annihilate any other threats that were covertly targeting it. This attack actually served as warning to US authorities. There was no leaving any stone unturned as far as security was concerned as this was a big tragedy to ever occur on American soil.
Further, it proved the reality of the terror threat as this was not just a threat to the American authorities alone as the cold war was, but it was a big threat to the civilians too. The 9/11 attacks greatly shattered this sense of complacency.
There was new awakening that America now needed to strike or destroy all threats that were facing it before the forces would attack its core as the 9/11 attacks did. And Iraq emerged clearly as one of the very threats that needed to be diffused.
According to Pollack (29), a poll conducted after the 9/11 attacks in the US showed that over 69 percent Americans actually favored a military option to end Saddam Hussein’s regime of covert terror. Varied and careful policy decisions had to be designed to tackle the Iraq issue. One issue had to do with the finances. The Iraq war was going to be too costly to the American tax payer.
But the 9/11 attack made support for a military action against Iraq gain a lot support. Those who thought that sticking a balance between the cost and benefit vouched for a limited covert intervention to bring about regime change in Iraq. They vouched for this since a limited military intervention would lead to lower costs to the taxpayer as opposed to a full all-out invasion.
Internationally, the international community supported the American full intervention in Iraq as they saw such a move as having been galvanized by the 9/11 attacks. As such, any diplomatic opposition to invasion to occasion any regime change in Iraq through military means was highly limited.
The international community actually felt that the American government had the sole responsibility of protecting its people from any form of attack or harm. Most were actually sympathetic as US lost over three thousand people in the 9/11 attack.
Pollack (101) argues that if America did not attack Iraq after the 9/11 attacks then this in itself would embolden the terrorist elements or the regimes that supported terrorist elements further. This would have meant that the regimes could use terror as a bargaining chip to receive many American concessions.
America effected the military action with all the force and zeal, and this actually served as the most deserved deterrent to such regimes, thereby making the American more secure.
This is because now no one would like to antagonize the US for fear of the consequences that may emanate out of such antagonism. What is more, by America asserting itself, many countries all over the globe may want to emulate American resolve to always put security list.
The policy of Containment
The policy of containment is a policy that has served the US for a very long period. However, use of this policy has been waning. This policy was quite effective in1991. It served the US effectively then. But the policy has been falling due to waning cooperation from the allies. The policy also served the US well at the time of the Cold War. Saddam, however, contributed to the failure of this policy during his reign (Pullan 300).
America had been opting for air strikes to contain Iraq, but, over time, most of the US allies explicitly stated that they were opposed to US military air strikes emanating from their territory or airbases. The Saudi government, however, wanted US airstrike mission to be instead launched from other neighboring states such as Kuwait or even Bahrain.
Turkey, was, and has been opposed to the US using its territory to launch any airstrikes. They actually were for one “massive operation to topple Saddam from leadership (Pollack 126). So, one can see that they were dead opposed to coercive military incursions that were being employed by US.
They actually did not have support for this kind of open-ended war against Saddam. This greatly took away the containment option that the US had employed for a very long time. One can therefore see that the Iraq war was actually worth due to this scenario.
Further, the US had been using the No-Fly-Zones (NFZs) as a way of limited military operations. But, most of the Arab states that were moderate were also opposed to the NFZs. They in fact wanted the NFZs eliminated completely. The Iraq military had no respect for such zones. The Iraq air defense forces, thus, shot at the coalition forces frequently.
These protracted attacks made the pilots of the coalition forces to respond in self defense. But still these defensive responses were taken as a propaganda tool. There were claims that the attacks led to massive civilian loss of life on the side of the coalition forces.
Saddam really did not respect any form of intervention. His regime instead would switch to several strategies to paint a really different picture. The neighboring states bought into this propaganda too (Ramesh et al. 366).
So, Kurds and Shia could not be well protected from the US use of deterrent air strikes. In fact Turkey felt that America should look for other ways of protecting the Kurds and Shia. The British and French were also largely tiring out of the use of NFZs strategy to contain Saddam’s attacks.
This was fear that arose of the anger that would arise out of the public. Some of the allies feared that the Iraq forces could capture their pilots or even bring down their expensive planes, bringing about heavy losses and political queries back at home.
Sanctions could not work effectively. One problem that arose was there was increased number of smuggling cases. Since Iraq could not trade legally due to sanctions, many neighboring countries now resorted to the black market deals with the Iraq regime. Iraqi oil, therefore, got smuggled. The smuggled oil at one time even amounted to over 350 million US dollars (Pollack 80).
This number had been going up as the sanctions got eroded by and by. In fact the returns from smuggled oil amounted to about 25 percent of all the Iraqi revenue. Neighboring countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and even Turkey were the greatest beneficiaries of oil smuggling syndicate (Pollack 78). This then effectively meant that sanctions imposed on Saddam’s regime were in effect becoming ineffective with time.
To make matters even grave, all manner of goods were now still getting into Iraq with the help on neighboring countries. These neighbors were more than willing to provide Iraq with whatever commodity it wanted.
Based on the UN inspectorate report, it was established that even weapons were still getting their way into Iraq. For example at one time, Russian made missile gyro-scopes were intercepted by Jordanian forces based on a tip-off by UN.
The oil-for-food program was being used to sneak into the country whatever Saddam wanted. Many countries in essence started to flout whatever the UN had sanctioned. It was for instance discovered by the US that China, had been privately constructing a fiber-optic communications system that was to benefit Baghdad’s military (Wright and Branum 234).
What is shocking is that here was a Security Council member, engaging in a massive project with such a rogue state, in total disregard for the sanctions that had already been put in place. So, one can see that Saddam actually had the means, support and might to still get what he wanted, including developing weapons of mass destruction.
Nuclear technology was an issue that made the US deeply worried. There were facts that Iraq had uranium and all it needed was to build the capacity for its enrichment and out of that nuclear weapons could eventually be developed.
Deterrence
One can see from the case developed earlier that so many other options were not going to stop Saddam. Trade embargoes, no-fly-zones etc were not at all going to succeed. So, the American government was forced to change tact and employ other options: deterrence being one of them. But, in this Iraq context, deterrence could not be quite different from containment (Pullan 99).
Due to the US military might, the US would allow Iraq to go ahead and arm itself so that it would feel secure. The fear of being toppled has been found to be what had been making Saddam destabilize neighbors. With a heavy arsenal, Saddam would feel secure, while at the same time being checked by the might of US arsenal. But no one was sure that such a move could work with Saddam.
The other option of containment could not work well since there were so many issues that worked against it. However containment could be rebuilt such that the sanctions could deter the massive smuggling that was still taking place. More UN inspectors could be deployed and be allowed to stay. However, this was not going to be guaranteed.
Another means could be like that one the US used in Afghanistan. This could mean covertly supporting elements in Saddam’s regime to topple him. This could mean providing these groups with finances and even weapons, and other logistical assistance to topple Saddam.
This would be good since it would minimize US involvement as much as possible. But after toppling, the responsibility of rebuilding Iraq would still face the US.
Full invasion was an option that was remaining. This would mean that the regime could be removed and replaced by a more friendly and democratic one quickly.
Conclusion
This paper aimed to confirm whether the war that was waged against Iraq was actually worth it. Several reasons and perspectives have been advanced. It has now appeared that the perspectives that greatly feature in the Iraq war were majorly realist and liberalist in nature.
Many critics have felt that the war in Iraq was not worthwhile because much hyped dangerous weapons were never found. It is absurd given that the war also had different benefits.
The Kurds and Shia provinces were now free. The Iraqi people are now free to choose whoever they wish to lead them through democratic elections. What is more, the country is endowed with wealth which is now being shared equitably. With the war, many can now share in the wealth of the nation.
As seen from the perspectives that dominate the war one sees that not only did America just overthrow a rouge regime but it also managed to reap several strategic advantages and this proves that the war actually was worth it.
Works Cited
Downing, David. The War in Iraq, UK, London: Heinemann Library, 2004. Print.
Gallagher, Jim. Causes of the Iraq War: Road to war, causes of conflict, Stockton, New Jersey: OTTN Publishing, 2005. Print.
Pollack, Michael. The threatening storm: the case for invading Iraq, UK, London: Random House, 2002. Print.
Pullan, Richard. US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation, UK, London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Ramesh, Thakur, Thakur, Ramesh and Singh, Waheguru. The Iraq Crisis and World Order, India: Pearson Education India, 2007. Print.
Segell, Glen. Disarming Iraq, UK, Staffordshire: Glen Segell Publishers, 2004. Print.
Stewart, John and Carlisle, Rodney. America at war, New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print.
Wright, Eric and Branum, Miles. War in Iraq, South Carolina: BiblioBazaar, 2010. Print.