Cause for the Iraq War and Were These Causes Justified - Coursework Example

Cause for the Iraq war and were these causes justified American foreign policy in the period after the end of the Second World War was characterized by an unprecedented urge for the centralization of power. This expression was caused primarily by the experiences of the inter war years and the growth of Hitler and were further reinforced and strengthened by the experiences of the cold war. The justification behind this was that global order was possible only in a situation where there is the deployment of a great deal of power in the hands of a single conscious hegemon (Cox, 2008). The idea has lost and found its relevance and acceptability over time but was reinforced with great vigor after the 9/11 experience. The event left an unprecedented impact o the US outlook by virtue of the fact that an event of such magnitude had not been witnessed in the US since the Pearl Harbor attacks of 1942. It would be interesting to start the essay with an over view of President Bush’s foreign policy agenda that got him elected to the Oval office and how this changed after the attacks so as to have involved the US in two wars within a period of a measly three years. The essay will then try and look at the theoretical groundings of the Iraq War thereby looking the ways in which the White House and the Bush administration have tried over the past 5 years to justify their actions along with the aims of the coalition and the ultimate assessment of the justifications as were given by the administration. The basic groundwork in the war on Iraq can be traced back to the Kuwait War. The points of reference were two fold. First it established a precedent that Saddam was indeed a villain who was not to be trusted and second, that the US was capable of successful troop deployment and control within very short periods of time and this deployment would produce results that would fulfill the set objectives. “…America possesses not only overwhelming strategic power— constantly enhanced by technological innovation— but also an unmatched capability to project its conventional forces to distant areas.” (Brzezenski, 1993). It also can be mentioned here as a point of interest that the man in the oval office during the Kuwait War was Bush Sr. many have seen George W Bush’s foreign policy beliefs and practices as an extension of this period. Indeed many of the members of the administration were drawn from here as well. Post 9/11, the perceptions in the US were simple. There were threats from state and non state actors which needed to be dealt with. The idea was that the country was already at war by virtue of the fact that the lives of its citizens were in danger. There was thus the need to secure these lives and this could be done only by the removal of the non state actors that had become a threat and if this meant that the states that were harboring these elements needed to be targeted then so be it. In one of his oft quoted speeches Pres. Bush stated, “Whatever it takes…We will fight the terrorists across the Earth, not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake" (Bush, 2004). The idea that was sold to the public was simple. The US was now embarking on a trans-national crusade to defeat international terrorism and was doing so with a set of capabilities that were impressive. It was in fact stated by an author, critical of the imperial stance of the Bush administration that in an age of unparalled US dominance, the US had arrogated to itself the new role of setting standards, determining threats, using force and meting out justice (Ikenberry, 2002). All of this when put in perspective would mean that the war that was eminent was in essence a preventive war or a war that had to be waged in order to prevent further strikes against the citizens of the US. A preventive war is basically a war in which one state attacks another state under the justification of preventive self defence and hence finds some kind of approval from the international community. Preventive war and preemptive war differ with regards to whether or not a war is certainly expected in the future. While a preemptive war concerns an imminent attack, preventive war takes place with no military provocation and is therefore a war of aggression, forbidden by international law. The justification often used by states engaging in preventive war is that another state may attack them in the future – thus an attempt to prevent it (Rockmore, 2006). In this sense then the war on Afghanistan was preemptive because there was evidence in the form of the 9/11 attacks that there was indeed danger that needed to be given proper consideration. The debate now lies with respect to whether the war on Iraq was preemptive in nature because post war evidences show that there was indeed no plan that Iraq had to attack the US. Justifications that were given however, labeled the strike as being preemptive and thus basically an exercise in self defense. The basic reasons that were put forward by the Bush administration in front of the world to attempt a preemptive strike on Iraq was the idea that this would be in essence a continuation of the efforts to wage the global war on terror. It was clarified by the administration in many ways ( like in 2006, when John Negroponte, the director of National Intelligence, reported publicly for the first time to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the war on terror was the administration’s highest priority ), (Lustick, 2006). Most of this rhetoric is encapsulated in what is now referred roughly to as the Bush Doctrine promulgated in 2002 which claimed a right for the US to act pre-emptively against the terrorists, states harbouring terrorists and other rouge states (NSS, 2002). The war on Iraq has been described by some as being targeting of a non combatant state for political purposes (Bellamy, 2005). Having now understood the theoretical framework that was the justifying force behind the war on Iraq it one can now look at the various dynamics that went in to making the war. It has been now publicly accepted that the decision to go to war in Iraq was made as far back as in October, 2002 a full eight months before the war actually materialized when the US Congress had just voted to authorize the President to go to war against Iraq (Joint House resolution, 2002). It was also around this time itself that the myth about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was precipitated by Bush and his administration (Danner, 2005). At the 107th Congress, the statement made by the president was indicative of the things that were to come. In fact the responsibility was cleverly put on Saddam’s shoulders. Statements like the one above were often coupled with claims about having proof that existed about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction or WMDs. It was stated clearly that Iraq had the power to prevent war by “declaring and destroying all its weapons of mass destruction"—but if Iraq did not declare and destroy those weapons, the President warned, the United States would "go into battle, as a last resort." Most of this became public knowledge when the Sunday Times published the minutes of the memorandums in the period leading up to the British elections. There were meetings that were held in the UK in July, to discuss Iraq and the policy measures that were to be taken. The stand on Saddam was clear. His was a regime that was tough and based on extreme fear and thus could be overthrown only by massive military action. It was also reported that there were perceptible shifts that had taken place in the US policy attitudes. Buoyed by the success of the Afghani campaign, Bush now saw military action in Iraq as being inevitable (Sunday Times, 2006). There was also the issue of the connections with the Al Qaeda, most of which was perpetrated by the media. Newsweek articles and ABC stories were cases in point. Stanley Bedlington, a senior analyst in the CIA's counterterrorism center until his retirement in 1994, said "We were convinced that money from Iraq was going to bin Laden, who was then sending it to places that Iraq wanted it to go (Reasons to go to war, Thing You might have forgotten, 2005)." Revelations that were made by Bob Woodward and others demonstrate the fact that planning on the military front for the war had begun by November 21, 2001. It was around this time that the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was ordered by The President to look at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein. Secretary Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, who headed Central Command, were briefing American senior officials on the progress of military planning by the late spring and summer of 2002. In fact, a few days after the meeting in London leaks about specific plans for a possible Iraq war appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Thus on November 8, 2002, the Security Council decided that Iraq was in material breach of its disarmament obligations imposed inter alia, by Res 678, and issued an injunction to comply with these obligations strictly in accordance with the established schedule(Security Council, Res 1441). Those in opposition included the Russian Federation, France and China. There were a number of efforts that were made by the US to actually coax out of the Security Council a resolution that would authorize resort to military action in order to compel Iraq to comply with Resolution 144. But support was hard to come by and was in fat so limited that the US did not even attempt to take a simple majority vote (Murphy, 2003). The campaign was launched by the US administration finally on March 19, 2003 with a support from a minority of states and troops that had contributions from the states of Poland, Australia and the United Kingdom. The attack was justified on two basic grounds, both domestically (Address to the nation on Iraq, 2003) and at the UN. First, that the authority of the existing Security Council Resolutions, in particular Res 678 and Res 687 coupled with the findings contained in Res1441 and second, the need to defend the US and the international community from the threat that was posed by Iraq. The argument put forward was that Iraq had displayed a marked disrespect for the cease fire regulations of 1991 as imposed by Res687. For the same reasons indicated with regard to the military operations that were carried out in 1991 in the Gulf Crisis, the arguments as put forward in Res678 revived as a result of the many breaches that were made by Iraq of its disarmament obligations. The objections: There is however a number of objections that have been raised with regards to this particular stand that was taken by the Bush Administration. Most of these objections look justified in the light of the fact that there were ultimately no weapons of mass destruction that were discovered in Iraq. There are scholars who put the idea as being part of the hegemonistic policy that was ultimately endorsed by the administration. The 2002 National Security Strategy, formulated in response to the 9/11 attacks, makes it clear in retrospect that the real cause behind the war was a move in direction of "full spectrum dominance;" which was further precipitated by the strategy of dealing with resistance to the US not simply through traditional containment, but via "preventive wars;" the resort to unilateralism, with ad-hoc "coalitions of the willing”. What this would translate in to is an idea that, “those not with us are against us” (Enmark et al., 2005). This means that there was an idea within the ranks of the administration that the US has the power and the implicit authority to effect regime change in a part of the world where governance is existent in a form that is not recognized or accepted by the US. This was therefore a direct move to effect the removal of a dictatorial regime and replace it with democracy (Sands, 2005). Another reason that has now been accepted as being the central or the main cause of the invasion was the need to control Oil. One of the main pillars of US global hegemony is its protectorate over the "world" oil reserves concentrated in the Persian Gulf. It has been written about and debated. In fact some say that it was as far back as the 1940s that the US recognized the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, in particular Saudi Arabia to be what they called, a source of stupendous strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in History (Chomsky, 2005). Rivals thus had to be removed. The idea was that due to the glut in the oil market, the US wanted to keep Iraqi oil out of the equation so as to prevent the price of oil from dipping too low. Most of the inner track on Iraqi oil however was controlled vastly by Russia and France and not by US based majors. There was thus a need to keep Iraqi oil from developing further. Most of the Middle East is a resource rich but conflict inflicted area, partly because of western intervention so as to get a stake in the resources. Getting Iraq and the establishment of a pro Washington, dummy government would serve the dual purpose of giving the US controlling stake in Iraq’s oil reserves and ensuring that the message about who is boss got across neat and clear to the other rouge state-Iran and the king of dissenters i.e. Saudi Arabia. Conclusion and Summary: If one was to try and answer the question about the justification of the war, one comes up with no reasons other than the arrogance, greed and perhaps the hypocrisy of the Bush administration coupled with the urge that the President had to play god. The fact that Saddam was in fact a US pillion during the period of the 90s is now well known. The fact that the US turned a blind eye to his atrocities on the Kurds as long as he acted out the role of the balancing factor to the USSR dominance in the region is also accepted. None of the justifications as were provided came true. Osama Bin Laden was indeed NOT hiding in Iraq. The public acceptance of the benign hegemon who tried and successfully liberated Iraq is also a myth. Iraqis hate the new western government as much if not more than they hated Saddam. The perception now is that US created a mess in Iraq and is now looking to turn its back on its own mess. Iraq today is in position much worse than what it was when the US started out. Infrastructure has been desecrated and it is now much more than before that Iraq is susceptible to Taliban influence. In fact with the US in the grips of a powerful recession, there is next to zero chances of such an initiative materializing any time soon. The new President has spoken at length about the programmes for troop withdrawal, nothing the state that Iraq would be left in. It can be stated with some level of assurity that if situations are to improve in Iraq, then there is going to have to be a much more cooperated and sincere effort that needs to be made by the international community. Given the state of the global economy however this seems more like a dream with little chances of materializing. Reference: Michael Cox, ‘From the cold war to the war on terror’, Baylis and Smith, The globalization of world politics: an introduction to international relations., pp.83-87. Hinnebusch R, 2006, The Iraq War and International Relations: Implications for Small States, University of St An Andrews, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, , Volume 19, Number 3, p451-461, accessed May 14, 2009, http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/intrel/media/iraq_war_ir_theory_implications_small_states.pdf Ikenberry J, 2002, America Unrivaled: The Future of Balance of Power, Ed. Paperback, p44 Lustick I, 2006, Trapped in the war on terror, Pub, University of Pennsylvania Press, p29-35 Rockmore T, 2006, Justifying the First Blow, Duquesne University, accessed May 15, 2009, < http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:5lFrTCppuPUJ:se1.isn.ch/serviceengine/FileContent%3FserviceID%3D47%26fileid%3DBA6EFF40-B5F7-8577-11B8-AB1889883D14%26lng%3Den+Difference+between+preemption+and+prevention,+books&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk> Bellamy A, 2005, Just wars: from Cicero to Iraq, Edition: illustrated Published by Polity, 2006, p157-159 Danner M, 2005, The Secret Way to war, The New York Times, Review, Vol52, no10. Woodward B, 2004, Plan of attack, p177-178 Reasons to go to war, Thing You might have forgotten , 2005, accessed May 15, 2009, < http://www.reasons-for-war-with-iraq.info/> .D. White and E.P.J. 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