U.S. foreign policy in Iraq - Essay Example

U.S. Foreign Policy 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 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). 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). The Bush administration played the terrorism card to the American people as a political tool to gain public and therefore congressional support for the Afghanistan invasion, the country where the infamous Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda architect was thought to be hiding out. Bush soon thereafter defended sending the better part of the military to Iraq since it was supposedly terrorist threat as well because of its enormous stockpiles of ‘WMD.’ Of course the facts known then as well as now are that nine of the 13 terrorists connected with the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia (zero from Iraq) who acquired passports from Iran and took their directive from an Afghanistan-based organization. In President Bush’s management of his ‘war on terror,’ three facts stand out: Bush initiated a sustained military attack against an phantom enemy that had demonstrated no aggression against the U.S., the underlying motivation for the invading Iraq was not based on combating terrorism and it has supplied new examples of U.S. brutality for anti-US terrorist recruiters including al-Qaeda. 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). March 27, 2011 Burkeman, Oliver & Borger, Julian. “War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal.” Manchester Guardian. (November 20, 2003). March 27, 2011 Glantz, Aaron. “Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor.” One World USA. (August 25, 2006). March 27, 2011 “Iraq After Saddam: GIs Swoop Down On Tikrit Suspects Iraq.” CBS News. (January 9, 2004). March 27, 2011 Shovelan, John. “Wolfowitz Reveals Iraq PR Plan.” The World Today. (May 29, 2003). March 27, 2011 Sullivan, Robert III. “Former Weapons Inspector Questions the War.” Cornell University Chronicle Online. (April 3, 2003). March 27, 2011 “US Threatens World Peace, Says Mandela.” BBC News. (September 11, 2002). March 27, 2011 Read More