Bush's Invasion Of Iraq
invasion of Iraq was surrounded by controversy even before it began on March 20, 2003 as several countries including key NATO allies of the United States like France and Germany were opposed to it. Almost twenty months later, the critics are still busy questioning the necessity of the military action in Iraq and calling for a quick withdrawal of the U.S. forces from the country. A dispassionate review of the causes for the invasion, the developments during the U.S. occupation, and the likely future of Iraq would, however, reveal that the decision by the Bush administration to Iraq was correct. This essay gives arguments in support of Bush's invasion of Iraq.
One of the main arguments against U.S. invasion is that the U.S. And British governments had accused Saddam Hussain of developing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) before the war but the U.S. forces have not been able to find any WMDs in Iraq so far. While this is true, it must be remembered that the suspected development of WMDs by Iraq was not the only reason for attacking Iraq. The most compelling reason was the appalling human rights record of Saddam Hussain, the most cruel, most evil tyrant on the surface of the earth. He killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people who opposed him. Mass graves with an estimated 300,000 bodies were found in Iraq by the U.S. forces after the war. He used chemical weapons against the Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq war and against his own Kurdish civilians, including innocent women and children resulting in the death of at least 5000 Kurdish civilians...
(Philips, para 4). There is little
doubt that Saddam would have been still in power, if not for the U.S. invasion. So we must ask ourselves: would the world have been better off with Saddam still in power? Surely the answer is an unequivocal no!
Now let us look at the other positives that have followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Unlike the predictions of most critics, who had expected a long drawn out battle with heavy casualties at the start of the war, the Saddam regime was toppled in three weeks with minimum casualties and with most of the country's infrastructure intact, including its oil fields. This achievement by the U.S. forces was an improvement even over the Gulf War I, generally considered to be "very successful," in which the retreating Iraqi army had set many Kuwaiti oil wells on fire triggering an environmental disaster.
Moreover, in the post-9/11 scenario, it was imperative for the terrorists, rogue regimes such as that of Saddam, and other enemies of the United States to realize that the world's only super
power was no "paper tiger." Policies of appeasement have never been successful against tyrants,
history being full of such examples. As long as Hitler was not confronted militarily by the Allies in the 1930s, he kept getting bolder. American retreat from Somalia in 1993 was perceived by bin Laden as proof that the American soldiers were "paper tigers." In a 1998 interview, he said, "After a few blows, they ran in defeat ..." (quoted by West, para 4) On the other hand, after the Iraqi invasion by the United States, even a hardened supporter of terrorist networks like Col. Qaddafi of Libya started to 'see the light' and decided to dismantle his country's nuclear program besides deciding to cut off his links with terrorists
. Iran, which had been a belligerent opponent of the United States and the…
