War in Iraq Essay Example for Free

War in Iraq Essay War is one of man’s horrific undertakings that tarnished the beauty of what life has to offer. According to John F. Kennedy, this is why mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. One grave example of a country that has been affected by perpetuated wars is Iraq. Is it justifiable that the United States to intervene in the war in Iraq? The U. S. intervention in Iraq was triggered by Gulf War in the early 1990s. As a result, the Iraqi economy was shattered. The war was sparked about by Iraq’s revival of old territorial claims against oil rich Kuwait. Saddam Hussein called for the annexation of the Bubiyan and Warbah islands at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, and thus giving Iraq a clear passage to the Gulf. He also accused Kuwait of illegally siphoning off oil from the Ar-Rumaylah field, one of the world’s largest oil pools, which the two countries shared. Hussein threatened to use force against all Arab oil producers, (including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates) who exceeded their oil quotas, and accused them of collaborating with the United States to strangle the Iraqi economy by flooding the market with low-priced oil. This has prompted the Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which evolved into a full coalition offensive against Iraq by the coalition forces. Sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, the offensive was then called the Gulf War (Rajaee, 1993, p. 93). After that, Iraq’s problems grew into larger proportions. More recently, Iraq has been the most active battleground in a U. S. -led war on terrorism, a campaign declared by the current Bush administration in the aftermath of a terrorist attack against the U. S. on Sept. 11, 2001. In March 2003, the U. S. led a coalition of 35 nations in â€Å"Operation Iraqi Freedom†, an invasion whose goals included curbing the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and toppling Hussein’s government. The world had been witnesses to images of U. S. soldiers helping a crowd of Iraqis topple a statue of their leader, Saddam Hussein, in a square in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The scene marked the approaching close of a three-week-old U. S. -led war in Iraq, aimed at ousting the long-time U. S. adversary. The statue’s fall also served as a symbol of the end of Hussein’s repressive 23-year regime, which had brought war and ruin to the Middle East nation of some 25 million people (Wishnick, 2004). Viewing the statistics, the Iraq Body Count Project (2006) estimated that there had been 47,083 to 52,222 civilian deaths. More than 1,500 U. S. military forces had lost their lives just to satisfy the mission of waging war against Iraq. In terms of economics, the United States had already spent $505 billion of taxpayers’ funds on the War in Iraq. The alarming death toll and the economic burden that the Iraq War has caused prompted some staunch critics to indemnify the necessity of waging this war. However, supporters of this Iraqi campaign had countered that the overthrow of Hussein’s government has made the global community a safer place. U. S. troops, working in conjunction with Iraqi security forces, are successfully marginalizing guerrilla insurgents. Once Iraq’s democratic government can support itself and Iraqi security forces are ready to police the country on their own, the U. S. will reduce the number of troops stationed in Iraq. Both sides have valid arguments about the Iraqi War, but which is more sound and justifiable? Will the U. S. policy on Iraq be for the greater good of the whole world and not just a proud exposition of the military might of the United States? Will this be the viable solution to the ongoing campaign against global terrorism? In my opinion, no war could ever be justified by means of preventing further damage and the U. S. intervening and containing the war. Although the intention was good, we have seen the ravaged city of Baghdad on our TV screens and we would see the pain in the people’s faces. Lives will continually be lost if the United States continue the policy of intervention, such as what happened in Iraq. Thus, Americans should continue to condemn war because, as peace-loving citizens, we have seen throughout history that no war has brought upon any positive effect for any nation. Works Cited Rajaee, F (ed). The Iran-Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993. Wishnick, E. Strategic Consequences of the Iraq War: U. S. Security Interests in Central Asia Reassessed. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2004. Iraqi Body Count. Retrieved online 29 February 2006 at http://www. iraqbodycount. org/