Why America should have never gone to war with Iraq

Iraq War- Why America Should Have Never Gone to War

With human rights violation reaching its peak in Iraq and with pictures of Iraqi prisoners proving that U.S. soldiers are committing worst possible war crimes, every American is facing a dilemma: should we support the government or should we not. Everyone is asking the same question, what is America's point for continuing war in Iraq? Does America need to be in Iraq, should it have launched the military attack in the first, Is America really a champion of democracy or simply another terrorist state looking for ways to terrorize weaker nations? These are the questions that are bothering every thinking soul in the world and especially in America where public opinion is sharply divided on the issue of war. Any person with even the slightest degree of humanity left in him would want America to immediately pull out its troops from Iraq where continued presence of U.S. troops is creating a major human rights situation.

If anything those pictures revealed it was that America is certainly not the symbol of love and peace that it claims to be. America is anything but a saintly country because nowhere do we have seen human rights being violated so blatantly and without a hint of hesitation or remorse as we are now witnessing in Iraq where innocent civilians are being cruelly being used for sick pleasures. Those pictures proved that America shouldn't have been in the war in the first place and even if it considered military attack important, it should have pulled out the minute the war was over and Saddam Hussein was captured. America should never have gone to war with Iraq is my stand on the issue and there are many economic, political, social, moral and ethical reasons to support my position.

Direct cost of war

There was once a time during the pre-war period that our sole concern regarding the war of economic consequences of a military attack. We were indeed worried about the economic losses that the country could suffer because of this war since it was being planned on a grand scale. Our concerns were certainly not unfounded since America is facing serious financial crunch because of the high cost of maintaining troops in Iraq and also due to the rebuilding plan that is being implemented. However since we have been awakened to the real horrors of war and the human cost of this cruel conflict, economic losses have taken a backseat in the minds of Americans. However it is still important to know that America stands to lose both economically and politically with this endless bloodshed in Iraq. For one, it is clear that we have lost the war of winning hearts and minds. No hearts and no minds around the world can seriously accept human rights violations that U.S. troops are guilty of. Secondly, we are also losing financially with cost of war rising and with government asking for extra funds all the time. Do we even realize that all this money is our money, the tax payer's money that is now being spend on what- On killing and torturing innocent Iraqi citizens.

Unlike the first Gulf war, this time America was depending on no other country but itself when it came to bearing the cost of war. United States has been the sole financier of this military conflict, which has only quadrupled the economic problems of the country. Even the preparation stage of war had cost America $100 billion, which is a huge sum of money whichever way we look at the issue. And now after the war is supposedly war, the cost of maintaining troops in Iraq is having a deep negative impact on the economy. The monthly cost of maintaining troops is Iraq was more than $9 billion when calculated a few months ago and must have risen now with military acceleration in some areas. Simply the transportation cost of shifting 250 million troops to Iraq came to $13 billion. And do we know that all this cost was being incurred at a time when America was in deep economic troubles and every major business was suffering from financial problems.

And now that the war is over, we are still in deep economic troubles because of the on going so-called rebuilding initiative in Iraq for which our troops are still posted in that country. It is important to mention here that just a few days back, May12 2004, government sought Congress' approval for extra$25 billion to meet the ever-rising cost of war in Iraq. And what is more troubling is the indication given the government that this figure might be raised in case more funds are needed to maintain troops in Iraq.

JAMES TOEDTMAN (1004) of Newsday reported on May 13: "Congress already has allocated $131.4 billion for the war. The White House submitted a $25 billion supplemental request to Congress last night that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said would cover expenses through next spring. After yesterday's hearing Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said that Republican leaders in the House and Senate have indicated that figure would be raised to $50 billion."

The cost of war has already reached the figure of $152 billion and is likely to touch the $200 billion mark by the end of 2005. Do we know that before the war had been launched, White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey had estimated that the war would cost anywhere between $100 and $200 billion and he had been fired for giving such "huge" figures.

Human Right Violation

If economic cost and selfish motives are not enough to convince us of the brutality of war and of the fact that America's presence in the region is completely unsought, unneeded and unjustified then probably the human rights violation going on in Iraq will help us see hwy America should never have gone to war with this country. Iraq may have been a rich country for some since it has the second largest oil reserves in the world but where social conditions were concerned, Iraq was simply a third world country. The health and sanitation conditions in the country were not up to the mark. Children in Iraq were suffering from poor living condition, unhygienic and unhealthy environment and simply from lack of food and clean drinking water. Under these conditions, no one would want to launch a military attack on such a region and further destroy the living conditions. By attacking Iraq, America has proved that it simply doesn't care about Iraqi people and all the rhetoric about America wanting to save Iraqi people was nothing but a lie. American public was naive enough to blindly accept what the government told them about Saddam Hussein and America's desire to save the people of Iraqi. If anyone had ever paid a visit to Iraq, he could see how poor the country was and how it lacked basic amenities. America could have sent humanitarian help to the country if it was sincere in its desire to help the people there. Instead what it did was attack the poor country and Iraqi civilians simply to prove a point i.e. America can attack any region anytime it pleases and doesn't even need to give a reason for its attack.

The pictures released last week have created given rise to extreme fury and passionate debates around the world regarding America's double standards when it comes to human rights violations. If Saddam was hurting his own people, America wanted him out of the country- captured and punished. But when a third party has entered the country and is treating its people like toys and trash, America lets it happen because the third party happen to be none other than America itself. What kind of standards are these? What kind of policy do we have? What kind of values are we trying to promote?

Chinese news agency says this about brutal violations of human rights in Iraq: "The mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers was an inevitable outcome of the United States' long-term exertion of hegemony and power politics in the world," said Dong Yunhu, vice- chairman and secretary-general of the China Society for Human Rights Studies. "The United States always pursued a double standard in the human rights sector," he added. "It regarded itself as the incarnation of human rights, often criticizing other countries' human right 'problems' and forcing other countries to obey international conventions on human rights, while it ignored its own human rights problems and willfully offended international conventions." (Xinhua (China); 5/11/2004)

America's credibility has suffered a major setback and with it, Americans are being viewed as 'the enemy'. This erosion of America's credibility has only created further problems for American citizens around the world and the country must not express shock and surprise if we learn that an American citizen was brutally murdered in some part of the world. This is because American policies, its double standards, its mistreatment of prisoners and its baseless military attacks are responsible for creating problems for American nationals. The pictures proved that America's dream of restoring democracy in Iraq were nothing but empty hollow promise.

Susan Page (2004) writes: "The brutal pictures have reinforced a broader sense that the costs of the war in Iraq, financial and human, are spiraling beyond even the administration's worst-case expectations. And the prospect of achieving the original goals -- establishing a pro-Western democracy in Iraq that would ripple through the Middle East -- has become more distant as U.S. credibility erodes."