THE REAL REASON THAT WE WENT TO WAR IN IRAQ
The march toward the War In Iraq has never included a detailed explanation by President Bush of why Iraq must be attacked 2003. How did the United States manage to live for decades with the dangers of the former Soviet Union and yet cannot practice containment with a far less formidable foe? How did the United States live with the fact that from 1979—1981 Iran held our US diplomats hostage in our embassy without resorting to war. In 2003, despite a paucity of hard evidence, Iraq was made to seem an urgent threat demanding immediate action: “we don’t want ‘the smoking gun’ to be a mushroom cloud” is the memorable phrase used by the then national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice.President Bush has changed his public rational for the increasingly costly American military effort in Iraq. The once-herald search for WMD’s is now little more than a footnote as Bush recasts Iraq into a broader war against terrorism. He continually revives his justification for invading Iraq; first moving from narrow military objectives to Survival-of-Civilization stakes now. Initially the rationale was specific: to stop the Iraq Leader, Saddam Hussein, from using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or from selling such weapons to al-Qaeda or other terrorists groups. But, almost 4 years later and no WMD found, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive “struggle between good and evil.”When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Bush shifted his war justification to one of liberating Iraqis from a brutal ruler. After Saddam Hussein’s Capture in December 2003, the rational became helping to spread democracy through the Middle East. Later it became “confronting terrorists in Iraq so we do not have to face them here at home,” and “making America Safer.” In 2006 he declared that “It’s a struggle between good and evil.” Vice President Cheney went even further: “The hopes of the civilized world ride with us.”In a speech to U.S. troops in June 2003, President Bush declared that “… America has sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.” Bush first sought to explain the increasing insurgent and sectarian violence as a lead-up to Iraq elections. He has insisted that U.S. soldiers will stand down as Iraqis stand up. But the elections came and went and the violence has continued to increase. Having jettisoned most of the earlier upbeat claims of progress, Bush these days emphasizes the consequences of leaving Iraq: abandonment of the Iraqi people, destabilizing the Middle East and emboldening terrorists around the world. More that 3000 U.S. Military have died and over 22,000 have been injured and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died—most of them since Bush’s “Mission Accomplished Speech.” Bush’s war in Iraq is the beginning of a long-term strategy of preemptive war and mostly unilateral American policy that is both mistaken and terribly dangerous for the future. Iraq was to be the case study of American power and dominance. The war was planned even before September 11th by the “neoconservatives” who control U.S. foreign policy under Bush. The unresolved conflict with Iraq provided the immediate justification for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf. They wanted a vivid demon- stration of the military power that the United States posses, to convenience countries in the region and around the world to be more submissive to American interests and goals. The war was also aimed at the nations that Bush identified as the “axis of evil”—Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and many other countries, especially in the Middle East, that the U.S. wanted to influence. Look at what we did to Iraq—if you don’t follow what we proscribe, you could be next. This was to be the beginning of the American Empire.The War in Iraq was not presented to the American public as a way to build an American Empire. Neither did they justify the war to the soldiers or the parents of those that died that it was for an American Empire. Our leaders sent us down the road to ruin with outright lies, half-truths and deceptions. By pursuing this policy, they ignored the problems that we have here at home—healthcare, drug costs, education, Social Security, Medicare, huge deficits and crime—and spent the money that could have helped solve these problems in Iraq. America’s love of liberty has not interfered with its passion for Empire!
