Is US Attack On Iraq – Justified Or Not?
In the winter of 2002 on 12 September, Andrew Card, the White House Chief of Staff, called for “an action against Iraq” in the United Nations Security Council alleging that the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and was assisting terrorist networks to carry out more terrorist attacks like the one witnessed on 11 September 2001 in the US. This speech was a prelude to what the rest of the world was afraid of.
Leaders of France and Germany immediately argued there was no evidence of any WMDs and invading Iraq wasn’t justified. The United States (US) kept on with its war preparations ignoring more than 3,000 war protests which took place before the invasion, including the largest anti-war rally of three million people in Rome. The Iraqi armed forces were already decimated in the Gulf War of 1991 and offered little resistance when the US forces – along with the United Kingdom and Australia – attacked Iraq on 20 March, 2003 (six months after the Andrew Card’s speech) in the operation named ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. Since the US forces set out to free Iraq, close to a million Iraqi souls have been liberated at the cost of approximately 5,000 ‘liberators’ –the Allied casualties.
Was the US decision to invade Iraq on the pretext of finding and destroying ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which were never found, justified or not?
The invasion was necessary to safeguard the world
The US didn’t act single-handedly for its own sake; the Security Council had passed many resolutions prior to the war which clearly stated that the WMDs in the hands of a dictator could jeopardize world peace.
The Iraqi regime refused to cooperate with the Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), an inspection team to monitor the existence of WMDs in Iraq, on 16 December 1998. Because of the previous history of the regime and the absence of any UN inspectors in the country, it was impossible to believe that the regime had given up its secret weapons program.
The regime of the Iraqi dictator had issued a decree in 1990 which permits men to kill women relatives in the name of honor and without any fear of being punished. The US intervention has only saved many women from such a terrible fate.
Documents gathered during the Gulf War reveal how Ali Hassan al-Majid nicknamed Chemical Ali, the Secretary General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba’ath Party, used chemical weapon on the ethnic Kurd population of Northern Iraq between 1986 – 1989, decimating over 4,000 villages and killing between 50,000 – 100,000 civilians. Operation Iraqi Freedom has only disposed of such a cruel dictator.
The majority (60%) of the Iraqi population adheres to the Shia version of Islam but they didn’t have any say in the politics until Saddam Hussein remained in power. It was only after the Iraqi invasion of 2003 that a democratically elected government came into power.
The United States intervened in Iraq only after it was established by the intelligence reports that there was a connection between the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization and that the Iraqis were training al-Qaeda fighters.
The 2003 Iraq War was perfectly legal because in the American Senate, 98% Republicans and 58% Democrats voted in favor of the bill named Authorization for use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Moreover, the International Criminal Court never issued any decree against the US invasion; it wasn’t an illegal act to invade Iraq.
Iraq had violated the UN Security Council resolution 1441 and the US attacked Iraq only maintain international order.
Those who say the US invaded Iraq for oil are missing the point because it is not the US but the Chinese companies who are reaping the benefits of the US invasion and are securing major deals with the fragile Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has awarded a dozen contracts to develop oil fields since 2003 and four (33%) of them have gone to the Chinese companies.
The invasion shows a power drunk superpower
The US invaded a sovereign nation on the pretext of the existence of WMDs; which were never found. The documents presented by the US government to the world proving the existence of WMDs in Iraq were forged. Former US president George W. Bush said publicly on 28 January 2003 the British government had learnt that Saddam Hussein sought high quantities of uranium from [Niger in] Africa. With the cooperation from the Niger government it was clear in March 2002 that the CIA documents concerning the nuclear weapons in Iraq were forged but the Bush administration continued to use the documents even a year after the war.
According to Eric S. Margolis, a journalist for the Toronto Sun, US government was worried by the surging economies of India and China. The CIA thought the burgeoning economies of these nations would cause global shortages by/before 2030 and it’s essential to keep America’s energy security intact; therefore, the US moved in with all its forces to secure the oil wells in Iraq. Pulitzer Price winner writer Thomas L Friedman wrote in the New York Times on 6 January 2003 “Any war we launch in Iraq will certainly be – in part – about oil.”
According to a UN estimate about a million people perished while Saddam Hussein was in power but almost the number innocent civilians killed after the US invasion is almost the same. Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death after his capture for abusing human rights; but, hasn’t the US president George Bush done the same?
Why would the traditional allies of the US – France and Germany – back out in case of Iraq war? Wasn’t Iraq with WMDs a danger to them? The simple answer is, the governments of those countries knew well back then that there didn’t exist any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and it wasn’t worthwhile to put their soldiers in harm’s way and take the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the US invasion has freed the people of Iraq from the grips of a tyrannical dictator but that is not the full story. The US could have intervened when Saddam’s regime was massacring thousands of innocent Kurds and other minorities but the US decided to intervene only when its own security was at stake and named the war a ‘humanitarian intervention’. The war ripped the country apart into factions and brought it on the verge of a civil war; resulting in the displacement of millions of people within the country. The war also left some questions unanswered: how is it possible for a country to defy international opinion and attack a sovereign nation? Whether the new regime brought in by the US brings prosperity and peace to the people of Iraq or not still remains to be seen.
