Using 9/11 as Justification to Invade Iraq: A Critical View

Introduction: Manufacturing a Case for War

The war in Iraq may or may not have been justified for humanitarian or ideological reasons, depending on one's perspective. American leaders who favored war with Iraq used the frightened public mood after 9/11 to maneuver opinion toward supporting the war, supposedly for America's safety. According to "Clarke's Take on Terror":

"In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one . . . The charge comes from the adviser, Richard Clarke . . . Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan . . . Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initially thought Rumsfeld was joking."

Another American stated in hindsight, "If the government can use 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq, then what prevents them from using 9/11 to shut up anyone who doesn't agree with government policy? They think the U.S. public will believe their scare tactics . . . To a frightening degree they have been right" ("9/11-Big Deal"). Rationales for war with Iraq were manufactured, as we now know, out of little more than thin air and a fervent wish by the Executive Branch to wage war on Iraq in particular. These "compelling" reasons were then swallowed by the Legislative Branch. The national mood at the time was that anyone who did not favor war was "unpatriotic."

Iraq Presented No Military Threat to the United States

Using 9/11 to convince America to wage war against Iraq was a misguided tactic for three main reasons: (1) Iraq presented no military threat; (2) UN inspectors had been unable to find weapons of mass destruction there; and (3) UN sanctions against Iraq were not given enough time to work. Based on those reasons, the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inadequate and inappropriate justification for the invasion.

First, Iraq presented no threat to the United States. When then-Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations General Assembly, asserting that reliable evidence showed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, enough Americans became frightened of another foreign attack — this time by Iraq. However, the American public would likely not have accepted that argument had the country not recently been attacked. President George W. Bush also mentioned in his State of the Union Address what even his close advisers knew was false: that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Africa. Sinister links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden were also made to seem real, although no evidence of that existed, either.

James Bamford suggests: ". . . The Bush administration's immediate response to 9/11 was to call for an attack on Iraq, and it subsequently invented justifications for the preemptive war that has ultimately left the United States more vulnerable to terrorism" (A Pretext for War, Back Flap). Meanwhile, American troops were so preoccupied with Iraq that Osama bin Laden slipped into Pakistan from Afghanistan — where America should have been concentrating its efforts. The real villain was allowed to escape while the nation chased a chimera in Iraq. As the 9/11 Commission Report states: "This immeasurable pain was inflicted by 19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan" ("Executive Summary," p. 10).

UN Inspectors Found No Weapons of Mass Destruction

House and Senate members who doubted the need for war feared voting or even speaking out, afraid of being labeled "unpatriotic." Yet it was only in the emotionally charged aftermath of 9/11 that the United States embraced waging war on a nation that had not threatened it.

Second, UN inspectors had already determined that no weapons of mass destruction — which still provided the most powerful rationale for war — existed in Iraq. Undaunted, President Bush and his delegates insisted, again and again, that such weapons did exist and that once American forces entered Iraq, they would find them. Implicitly, that idea cleverly appealed to the still-bruised national ego: Americans wanted to believe that their troops could somehow find what trained UN inspectors could not. The plan was to oust Saddam from his palaces and private areas, where weapons were presumed to be hidden. Afraid in the aftermath of 9/11, Americans accepted that argument.

Conclusion: Fear, False Information, and an Unnecessary War

A combination of fear and false information created an unnecessary war. The three arguments examined here — that Iraq posed no military threat, that UN inspectors had already failed to find WMDs, and that UN sanctions had not been given adequate time — demonstrate that the invocation of 9/11 to justify the invasion of Iraq was both inadequate and inappropriate. The real perpetrators of the September 11 attacks were based in Afghanistan, not Iraq, a fact documented by the 9/11 Commission itself. Exploiting a traumatized nation's grief and fear to launch a preemptive war against an unrelated country represents one of the most consequential failures of American political judgment in the modern era.