The U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq - Research Paper Example

U.S. War in Iraq The expression “the first casualty of war is the truth” would probably be appropriately applied to all of the wars between nations throughout the entire history of warfare. The Iraq war, however, will always be branded as the only war that was based completely on lies. The truth died several deaths prior to the human deaths that occurred due to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq (March 2003 – August, 2010). As the war progressed following the 2003 invasion, the American public progressively lost confidence in the Bush administration’s war policy as they grew to understand more and more what the majority of the rest of the world had realized since the first nights bombing of Baghdad. The war is undeniably illegal as defined by the United Nations (UN) and International Court of Justice (ICJ), the two most paramount legal bodies in the world. Iraq had no link to terrorism, no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and no legal rationale to attack. Despite this, Bush decided to invade the Republic of Iraq for causes deemed objectionable to the majority of other countries so he frequently relied on and utilized false information to rationalize it. He lied. This discussion will examine how the truth was a casualty early and often during the lead up to the war and outlines some of the consequences brought about by these far-reaching and deadly deceptions. Bush voiced his disagreement to the concept of ‘nation building’ during the 2000 presidential election debates but as president waged an undeclared war against a sovereign country that had neither attacked first nor threatened to. Immediately following and as a reactionary reply to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Bush stated the county’s intention to begin a ‘War on Terrorism’ which he portrayed as a protracted battle against those that would use terrorist actions in addition to the countries that enabled them. The eventual culmination of the selective legal reasoning and rhetoric concerning the ‘War on Terror’ was Bush’s order of the military to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, an illegal action on many fronts. Bush had constantly claimed that these actions were legal. First, he argued, due to language existing within the UN Security Council Resolution 1441 regarding Iraq and secondly, the invasions were an act of self-defense which is permitted by international law. Conversely, according to Richard Perle, advisor to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and official of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, “international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone.” (Burkeman & Borger, 2003). However, this option would have been “morally unacceptable” according to the Bush administration. Bush chose to solicit then followed the advice of biased, self serving legal opinion from a low-level Justice Dept. employee despite strong disagreement by higher level personnel within the Dept. in addition to and the U.S. State Department which cautioned against ignoring international law and U.N. laws in addition to covenants of the Geneva Convention. The Bush administration was determined in its careless use of military force and disregard for laws established to by the world’s community of nations. The initial foreign incursion of the U.S. military along with the ‘coalition of the willing’ in its ‘War on Terror’ was Afghanistan, more specifically the Taliban terrorist faction based in that country. The U.S. claimed to possess ‘clear and compelling evidence,’ that the State of Afghanistan was giving refuge to terrorists, as did Iraq. However, if this assertion were true, why then didn’t the Bush administration divulge this information to the UN Security Council so as to obtain legal grounds to invade? The United Nations Charter, Article 51, Chapter Seven stipulates “nothing shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations” (United Nations Charter, 1945). Article 51 allows a country the justification to “deter an act, or acts of imminent or ongoing violence” but only as a transitory solution until the UN Security Council takes the appropriate actions to ensure the protection of the affected region. By precise interpretation of this Article, the rights of self-defense a country can exercise does not comprise the right to retaliate after an attack has ceased (Mandel, 2004). To initiate Article 51 it is first compulsory that a country experience an ‘armed attack’ defined by the unambiguous meaning of the Charter.  The definition of ‘armed attack’ is wide-ranging, as established in the Nicaragua case where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the concept covers “the sending by or on behalf of a state of armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries’ and a state’s ‘substantial involvement therein” (O’Sullivan, 2001). The U.S. defended its invasion and occupation of Iraq to the countries of the world by announce, if not substantiating, that it was a undertaking to remove WMD which endangered not only the U.S. but all other countries as well. Secretary of State Colin Powell as well as other administration officials, predominantly with the U.S. Department of State, enthusiastically endeavored to state their justification for aggressive military actions and make this plan as acceptable to as many other nations as they could. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense at that time, is quoted in a Vanity Fair magazine interview dated May 28, 2003 as saying “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction” (Shovelan, 2003). Before to the invasion, Hans Blix, the man in charge of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, said unequivocally and very publicly that that his teams were never able to find any evidence of chemical, nuclear or biological weapons in Iraq after three years of relentless inspections. He further emphasized that he very much doubted that these types of weapons had ever existed. Scott Ritter, Former UN weapons inspector, generally considered a hard-liner opposed to the former Iraqi regime and a vocal supporter for thorough weapons inspections prior to the invasion that he was “absolutely convinced Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction” (Sullivan, 2003). The Central Intelligence Agency’s 2002 report, that the Bush administration exclusively relied on as evidence of their assertions, had incorrectly described, in detail, weapons of mass destruction within the country of Iraq (Central Intelligence Agency, 2004). Conversely, the Iraq Survey Group, head by chief inspector David Kay established that there were weapons of this description. According to Kay, who would soon resign as the Bush Administration’s head weapons inspector, “the U.S. intelligence services owed President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction” (“Kay”, 2004). In spite of that on May 29, 2003, President Bush yet again repeated his rhetorical claim during an interview with TVP, a Polish television station. “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories” (White House, 2003). A report, released on March 2, 2004 by the United Nation’s weapons inspection team, affirmed that “Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994” (Nichols, 2004). Colin Powell, who had himself abandoned Bush following one term in office largely due to the lies perpetrated by the administration, appeared on The Daily Show on June 8, 2005 where the former Secretary of State and retired 4-star general was questioned about those imaginary Iraqi weapons of mass destructions. “Now where we got the intelligence wrong, dead wrong, is that we thought he also had existing stockpiles, and now we know that those are not there” (“Transcript: Colin Powell”, 2005). It was Powell who had gone before the United Nations, an event broadcast live worldwide on television. There, Powell continued the Bush Administrations lie that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction therefore posing an imminent danger to world security. Powell would later articulate his deep sorrow regarding this very public appearance. On August 2, 2004 President Bush yet again claimed he had been given faulty information from his own intelligence organization but by now had on several occasions changed his reasons for invading Iraq. “Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq. He [Saddam] had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction. He had terrorists ties … the decision I made is the right decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power” (“Kerry”, 2006). Following the questionable invasion of Iraq, no ‘massive stockpiles’ of weapons were ever discovered. Bush has since admitted that “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong” (“Transcript: Bush”, 2005). At best, the intelligence supplied to Bush was flawed and at worst, his rationalization for war was based solely on fabrications. The alleged connection between the Iraq and the terrorist group Al Qaeda was referenced prior to the war and became the principal excuse of the Bush administration due to the lack of weapons evidence. Contrary to these allegations of terrorist ties, Powell stated in January of 2004, “I have not seen a smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the (terrorist) connection” (“Iraq After Saddam”, 2004). Romanian born U.S. citizen Benjamin B. Ferencz, the Chief Prosecutor of war criminals at the famous Nuremberg Trials following World War Two, condemned the hostile occupation of Iraq invasion calling it an “aggressive war” and declared that Bush, the war’s architect, “should be put on trial for his war crimes” (Glantz, 2006). The Nuremberg trial established that military aggression is regarded as the utmost of international crimes. Subsequent to the massive human carnage that occurred throughout the Second World War, the United Nations Charter was crafted so as to prevent this kind of action from ever occurring again. It contains unambiguous provisions barring any nation from using aggressive force without approval of the Security Council. Nelson Mandela, broadly renowned as one of the more respected statesmen of the world also condemned the action as “a threat to world peace. It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W Bush’s desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America” (“US Threatens World Peace”, 2002). Critics of the invasion argue that no country has the authority, or the right based on the UN Charter, to decide for itself whether Iraq was conforming with UN rules or to take matters, not to mention the law, into its’ own hands to enforce them. The U.S. has also been broadly chastised for applying a double standard in its rationale. The logic of this intervention is in direct opposition to earlier U.S. policies because it supplied Iraq with chemical and other weapons systems during the 1980’s to use in its eight year war with Iran. When the U.S. was searching for the supposed WMD, the popular joke widely spread was ‘the U.S. knows Iraq has weapons because they have the receipt.’ The Bush administration also employed illegal, secretive threats against other nations trying to force their support for the war. “A report published by the Institute for Policy Studies analyzed what it termed the ‘arm-twisting offensive’ by high-ranking U.S. officials to garner support. Bush describes the nations that supported him as the ‘coalition of the willing,’ but as the report concluded, it could be better expressed as a ‘coalition of the coerced’” (Anderson et al, 2003). Following the Iraq invasion, Osama bin Laden became more popular worldwide than Bush even in a considerably secular Muslim country like Turkey. This is a peculiar finding, a strange turn of events. Turks didn’t begin with such an attitude. It grew as a reaction against U.S. policies. Though the U.S. and its Pakistani ally have arrested considerable numbers of al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a new generation of furious young Muslim men has been the product. Al-Qaeda has gone from being a cell-based terrorist group to being a model and ideal for small local groups in Saudi Arabia, Casablanca, Indonesia, Turkey and elsewhere. “The U.S. is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the U.S. has of its own” (Cole, 2004). Bush played the terrorism card as a political means to achieve public and therefore congressional backing for the Afghanistan invasion, the loosely formed nation where the infamous bin Laden, Al Qaeda mastermind and financier was thought to be hiding. Bush soon afterward defended sending a good part of the military to Iraq because it was a supposed terrorist threat in addition to its vast stockpiles of ‘WMD.’ Of course the facts, which were known then, which is now public knowledge, are that nine of the 13 persons connected with the 9-11 attacks came from Saudi Arabia (none from Iraq) who obtained passports from Iran and took their orders from an Afghanistan-based organization. In Bush’s mismanagement of the ‘war on terror,’ three facts are clear: Bush instigated a sustained military assault against a phantom adversary that had shown no aggression towards the U.S., the underlying impetus for the invasion of Iraq was not founded on combating terrorism and it has offered fresh examples of U.S. brutality for anti-US terrorist recruiters. The illegal and many would consider immoral war in Iraq has precipitated an increase in terrorist attacks in addition to the loss of many thousands of Allied and Iraqi lives and as a result and has cost the U.S. greatly in terms of international respect. Moreover, the ‘war’ has financial costs reaching, conservatively speaking, well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The Iraq intervention helped turn what was a U.S. financial surplus into an enormous debt which has stifled the economy, a circumstance which will likely continue for many years to come. This enormous yearly deficit has caused the National Debt to grow astronomically. This debt will must be paid instead of allocating federal monies on education, healthcare, defense systems, welfare programs, etc. The U.S. military might is crippled too, both conceptually and literally. It could not react to a crisis of any magnitude which possibly could result in a catastrophic situation. As the war dragged on the Bush administration lost much support among the American public who today better comprehend what the much of the rest of the world knew since Iraq was initially invaded. The Bush’s war doctrine was promoted by lies, based on greed, and cost the U.S. worldwide admiration will likely never be recovered. Works Cited Anderson, Sarah; Bennis, Phyllis & Cavanagh, John. “Coalition of The Willing Or Coalition of The Coerced? How the Bush Administration Influences Allies in its War on Iraq.” (February 26, 2003). April 6, 2011 Burkeman, Oliver & Borger, Julian. “War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal.” Manchester Guardian. (November 20, 2003). April 6, 2011 Central Intelligence Agency. “Iraq’s Chemical Warfare Program Annex G: Chemical Warfare and the Defense of Baghdad.” (2004). April 6, 2011 Cole, Juan. “Bin Laden’s Vision Becoming Reality.” Antiwar.com. (September 13, 2004). April 6, 2011 “Colin Powell on Iraq, Race, and Hurricane Relief: Former Secretary of State Speaks Out on Being Loyal and Being Wrong.” (September 8, 2005). ABC News. April 6, 2011 Glantz, Aaron. “Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor.” One World USA. (August 25, 2006). April 6, 2011 “Iraq After Saddam: GIs Swoop Down On Tikrit Suspects Iraq.” CBS News. (January 9, 2004). April 6, 2011 “Kay: No Evidence Iraq Stockpiled WMDs; Former chief U.S. Inspector Faults Intelligence Agencies.” (January 26, 2006). CNN. “Kerry Seeks Urgency Against Terrorists.” (August 2, 2004). MSNBC. April 6, 2011 Mandel, Michael. “Say What You Want, But This War is Illegal.” No to Imperialist War. (July 18, 2004). April 6, 2011 Nichols, Bill. “U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994.” USA Today. (March 2, 2004). April 6, 2011 Shovelan, John. “Wolfowitz Reveals Iraq PR Plan.” The World Today. (May 29, 2003). April 6, 2011 O'Sullivan, David. “Is the Bombing of Afghanistan by the US and UK Lawful?” New Law Journal. (November 30, 2001). April 6, 2011 Sullivan, Robert III. “Former Weapons Inspector Questions the War.” Cornell University Chronicle Online. (April 3, 2003). April 6, 2011 (The) White House. (May 29, 2003). “Interview of the President by TVP, Poland.” Washington D.C. April 6, 2011 “Transcript: Bush speech at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.” (December 14, 2005). CNN. April 6, 2011 United Nations Charter. (1945). Chapter Seven. April 6, 2011 “US Threatens World Peace, Says Mandela.” BBC News. (September 11, 2002). April 6, 2011 Read More