American Foreign Politics: The Iraq War (2003-2011)

The war in Iraq is probably the most controversial event in modern history, in 2003 the US invaded Iraq which in turn led to harsh and heavy criticism from anti-war groups and many countries around the world. At the time in Washington, those who were in power were accused of lying to the public about Iraq’s regime possessing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. One of the main accusations and reasons for going to war was that the US was trying to acquire the abundant Iraqi oil reserves. Many prominent and important figures at the time expressed concern and were afraid that the war would increase anger, hatred, and disapproval of the US and other Western powers. These allegations, however, didn’t dissuade President George H. W. Bush and his administration they strongly believed that Saddam Hussein had plans to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and therefore posed a threat to the safety of the world as a whole. It is true that Saddam Hussein violated 17 resolutions adopted and ratified by the United Nations Security Council, two of which included further reaffirmation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. From that point of view, the United States’ concerns regarding Saddam Hussein and his regime were justified, but those who opposed the war mainly associate with it George H. W. Bush and his administration and blame him for what had happened.

On August 2nd, 1990 Iraq launched their attack on Kuwait thus starting the Persian Gulf War, Hussein wanted to assimilate Kuwait into Iraq and in the process gain possession of its rich oil reserves. Two days later, the UN called on Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, a US – led coalition put an end to the occupation the following year. After suffering defeat in Kuwait, Hussein had to repress uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Arabs Iraq was no longer safe for Kurds, so the US and its allies had to establish a ‘safe haven’ in northern Iraq. The US and its allies patrolled so-called ‘no-fly’ zones in northern Iraq, where Iraqi aircraft were banned from entering. In addition, Economic Sanctions were imposed against Iraq to prevent Hussein and his regime from developing any more biological, nuclear and chemical weapons. The UN ordered Iraq to be inspected in the mid-1990s and uncovered a lot of prohibited weapons and technology. In 1998, US President Bill Clinton ordered that air strikes be carried out in order to destroy any remaining prohibited weapons and technology Iraq may have, a small military intervention which came to be known as Operation Desert Fox. After the bombing, Hussein banned UN inspectors from re-entering Iraq, causing the sanctions to slowly evaporate enabling trade with Iraq. On September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre and destroyed the twin towers killing around 3,000 people. In 2002, President George W. Bush argued that Saddam Hussein and his regime had regained possession and production of prohibited weapons and technology. The Bush administration claimed that Iraq was collaborating and helping terrorist groups such as Al – Qaeda. A few months later, after the 9/11 attack the US considered the disarmament of Iraq a renewed priority. In late 2002, the UN passed Resolution 1441, calling for the re-entry of inspectors. The US claimed that Iraq had hindered and interfered with the inspector’s investigation and subsequently gave an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein stating that he had 48 hours to leave Iraq or suffer the consequences. When he failed to comply, the US launched airstrikes on a large bunker complex where he was reportedly hiding. US forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait despite concerns that they might burn oil fields and damage the environment in the process. They were met with little to no resistance and the environment wasn’t harmed at all. The biggest resistance that the US met came from Ba’th party forces, the republican guard was stationed in central Iraq and ordered to defend the capital. US forces captured the International Airport in Baghdad on April 4th, allied forces were met with vigorous resistance from the Republican guard over the next few days, but the city eventually fell into the hands of the US on April 9th, 2003. The forces captured Al-Basrah on the same day and the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul fell two days later. Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown was the last stronghold of the regime but it fell with little resistance on April 13th, 2003. On May 1st, 2003 President George W. Bush declared that the war in Iraq was over. Subsequently, Iraqi leaders fled into exile, the US was tasked with finding and capturing them, particularly Saddam Hussein, but he was eventually found and arrested on 13th December 2003. In mid-2004, he was handed over to Iraqi authorities for trial and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and executed on 16th December 2006.

After the fall of the Ba’ath regime, there was a torrent of looting and violence in Iraq’s major cities. Its economy was in ruins after 35 years of dictatorship, having suffered three major wars and many sanctions. It wouldn’t take long for the violence against US troops to rapidly evolve into full-scale guerrilla warfare and a drastic increase in allied deaths began. It went up from 150 in May of 2003 to 5272 in 2013. From the same time period, the total number of Iraqi deaths was reported to have been 179,240.

But the Iraq war was met with a lot of controversy in the US, the general public was divided into two sides pro-war and anti-war those who support the war claimed it was time to bring Saddam Hussein to justice for violations of human rights, and those who opposed the war accused the US of imperialism. However, support for the war began to decline drastically as more and more US atrocities came to light, the most famous being the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. US soldiers abused and humiliated Iraqi prisoners, shocking the world and damaging the war’s credibility. One of the main reasons for going to war with Iraq was to disarm Saddam Hussein, but evidence of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological weapons and technology has never been found and a report which was written and released by the September 11 commission in 2004 claimed that there was no evidence of a link between Iraq’s former regime and Al-Qaeda. Finally, after months of negotiations, the Iraqi government and the US came to an agreement in which the troops were to withdraw from all major cities in 2009 and from the country entirely by December 2011.