War Against Terror - Assignment Example

Many studies have found that the Iraq war was not a just war, because the US intention to forcefully overthrow Saddam Hussein and war on Iraq was not merely sanctioned by the UN Security Council. When the US administration put in efforts to draft a final resolution and failed to come with, the military action has been justified as it has already been found in a previous UN resolution, passed in November 2002, warning Iraq that it would have to face serious consequences (Russett, Starr, and Kinsella, 2009, p. 265). The US war against Iraq in 2003 was not sanctioned by UN Security Council even after Bush Administration felt to compel to seek UN approval for its military operation, but still, failure to receive it didn’t discourage the US government to go ahead with the war.

A war that can be justified, as often described as jus ad Bellum, must be a response to an aggressive act or aggressive threat and must be openly declared. A war of Just must also begin with the right intention and should be a last resort after all other options have been considered (Elshtain, p. 184). Iraq war, as generally reviewed by many media and experts, mainly after the war and when the US realized that there were no ‘weapons of mass destruction which the US has been claiming as one major reason to invade Iraq, was not a Just war and cannot be justified with ‘jus ad Bellum.

What are some of the shortcomings of the UN as an effective tool of conflict prevention and peacekeeping? The US war against Iraq in 2003, though it was not sanctioned by UN Security Council, was claimed by the US to be based on UN resolution 1441, a previous resolution passed in 2002 November. Obviously, UN resolution 1441 has intentionally been kept vague. From this vagueness of resolution 1441 which has been described as a sanction for the Iraq war in 2003, it is clear that the UN has never been in a way to prevent conflicts between nations, but rather, its chapters have eventually become supports for conflicts, or they have been misrepresented to gain wide support for the conflicts.

Another evidence for the shortcoming of the UN in conflict prevention is very clear from its stronger language used in Resolution 678, authorizing members states to use all necessary means, referring to the military liberation of Kuwait sovereignty.