What are arguments for and against the US intervention in Iraq?

Answer 1

Sadly enough its going to go on for a long time. Saddam was not a good ruler but his rule did have a functioning country... If you opposed him life was not good! However, Bush felt compelled to divert our military assets from fighting Al-Queda in Afganistan and to divert them to a country where Al-Queda was not tolerated to carry out dads unfinished business. The power vacuum he created in Iraq has led to much unrest and a welcome location for Al-Queda operatives to come in and join the Jihad. The Arab world is interesting in that the many different sects often do not get along with each other however, throw in Israel or their ally the US and see how quick they join together to fight a common enemy. This is going to go on for a long time. The problem when you get leaders in control who have never been in a war who really want a war they often pick a fight with no winning and no end.

AnswerThe only reason why Sadaam Hussein is not worse than Hitler is because Sadaam Hussein had Iraq and Hitler had Germany. These are precisely the type of people that need to be put in prison. But while most agree that Sadaam Hussein shouldn't be in power, many people argue over the means to accomplish the just end. Never forget, at the end of the day, many innocents were killed, maimed and hurt just for the purpose.

Lets not forget since the Invasion there's been an excess of 600,000deaths as of 2006, if the invasion did not happen they wouldn't have died.

many innocents were killed, maimed and hurt just for the purpose of "liberating" Iraq and its still ongoing, in fact compared to the amount the Americans killed Saddam is a saint in comparison

AnswerMany reasons why we should have done it.

1) Their top nuclear scientist still had the blue prints in his garden per Saddams orders.

Designing a nuclear bomb is easy, a university grad named Google John Aristotle Phillips of Princston in the 70s built one as a junior paper, anyone with a degree in physics can do it. The trouble is creating weapons grade uraninum which is quite a complex process.

2) Genocide against the Kurds

So the 2000 kurds Saddam killed with chemical weapons is horrible compared to the 50,000 American casualties and 600,000 Iraqi civilians?

3) Genocide against the Shi'ites

Same as number 2

4) "Food for Oil" was nothing more than a scam with pockets from France, Germany, Russia, and China being lined.

False, it was trade, there was nothing illegal except the embargo by the states with made the common Iraqi families suffer.

5) Al-Queda training camps in the north with Zarqawi

Saddam hated Osama, and Osama hated Saddam. In fact if you actually looked into this issue you would find that Osama offered to fight with Saudi Arabia against Iraq in the First gulf war.

6) Saddam paid martyrs families from acts of jihad on Jews $25,000.

There's alot more but this should be enough. MANY military people say that you would find the WMDs in the deserts of Syria.

In case you haven't noticed, people can lie. It's not real just because somebody claims it is real, evidence is needed, maybe you can get that in an another invasion of Syria.

And if i recall America helped pay the Contra death squads, the taliban in the 80s-90s, the Irani Dictatorship before it got overthrown and so on... please I'm getting tired of answering your ignorance, read some history before replying.

Reasons we should NOT have done it:

1) I have nuclear weapons blue prints. So do many people. It is a long, LONG way from blueprints to weapons grade fissionable isotopes, and from there to a functional bomb.

2) We encouraged genocide against the Kurds, by provoking them into rebellion with promises of military support, and then abandoning them as we did Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Winston Churchill was the first person to advocate the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, and Turkey doesn't like them either. We also permitted Turkey to bomb Kurdish populations in northern Iraq during the last three years. Why would the US endorse killing Kurds?

3) The Shi'ites are the major population of Iraq. This "genocide" was very much unlike the genocide of serbian christians against bosnian Muslims. Saddam endorsed a secular government, and his actions were just fine with us until France and Germany won lucrative oil contracts, and Saddam bought most of his weaponry from Russia.

4) The biggest part of the "oil for food" scam was that Iraq refused to give US oil companies cheap contracts since they could get more for their oil from Europe.

5) There were no Al Queda training camps in Iraq prior to our invasion. The United States occupied a large portion of northern Iraq, ostensibly to protect Kurdish populations there. We enforced the no-fly zone (except for when we permitted Saddam to gas kurds) and had sealed off the region protecting Mosul and Kirkuk.

6) Saddam paid the families of palestinian suicide bombers, as did many members of the Saudi Royal family. This was not to encourage further bombings, but as compensation for the fact that Israel knocked down their homes with bulldozers. Only one member of Al Queda passed through Iraq seeking medical attention in the year preceding our invasion--and was denied. Al Queda had no operations in Iraq until after our mismanaged war. As for supporting international terrorists, Abu Nidal was in Iraq from time to time, though he never received financial support from Saddam, and was executed him in 2002. So much for Iraqi support of international terrorists. Some two hundred thousand (200,000) Iraqi civilians have died from the violence caused by our invasion and occupation, and a million more have been displaced.

AnswerThe war is justified because, historically, weak countries with lots of resources always fall prey to stronger countries that want them.

Forget any moral justifications that is merely the pretence in politics to make out the aggressor is still the good guy.

There are and were no WMDs and the government knew this before the invasion. If WMDs were the justification then why hasn't North Korea (who we know for a fact has them) been invaded yet.

If use of chemical weapons 20 years ago to put down an uprising (killing 2000 people) was the issue that made Saddam bad how does this stand against Americas murder of 10s of thousands of people by chemical weapons in the Vietnam war 30 years ago. Or even its current use of chemical weapons in Iraq today (as admitted by the US government).

It certainly cannot be because of Saddams use of torture as currently the CIA has been found to be flying terror suspects to Eastern Europe and other destinations where they can be tortured by third parties.

The CIA admitted before the war that there was no link between Saddam and al Quaeda. Saddam and Bin Laden despised each other. The only part of Iraq with links to Al Quaeda was the northern kurdish part were Saddam didn't have control. The bit which America allied itself with.

I'm sure no one believes that we went to war because of how Iraq supposedly treated its women. That really was just mud to be slung to keep the American public onboard with the whole adventure. If truth be known of all Arab states Iraq was one of the most progressive when it came to womens rights. Women could vote and proportionately Iraq had more female representatives then America. Women made up a higher percentage of university students then anywhere in the Arab world and was inline with western gender distributions.

It wasn't even the fact the Saddam was a bad man (which he is) but so are most leaders if you dig enough dirt and sling enough mud. There are dozens of leaders around the world who are far worse, who have caused far greater attrocites and human rights violations. In Zimbabwe 100s of thousands of people have been hacked to death by machettes because they belonged to the wrong tribe, the women are taken to army camps where they are serially raped and mutilated (I bet they would wish to be Iraqi). The US government doesn't even speak out against these countries let alone invade.

The one true charge that could be put against Iraq and Saddam was that they had more oil then they could defend and that is, historically, indefenceable.

AnswerI disagree with the comment involving the US invading Iraq due to the fact that they have oil. If this were the case, the US would be taking over Iraq, not building and Iraqi democracy. The United States will not be getting free oil out of the deal by any means. I think they main motivation behind this was, #1 Sadaam Hussein was not cooperating with the UN, had no action been taken, it would discredit the UN's integrity, what motivation would other countries have to listen to them? #2 The everlasting quest to spread democracy, in the eyes of the US government, the more democracy found around the world and the less dictatorships...the better. And lastly #3 Sadaam Hussein has caused his share of trouble, including mass genocide of the Kurds and others as well as the invasion of Kuwait, etc. Hussein gave the US government plenty of reason to believe that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction when he chose to not cooperate with UN officials. And there still could very well be WMD's hidden in Iraq, this is something we may never know...

First of all the UN is not a global dictatorship, its members willing commit to the organization, members can choose not to obey and USA has used its veto powers alot.

Second of all in the last hundred years the USA has created more dictatorships than democracies, take a brief history in South Americas, Africa, and the Carribean, and the term American interests. Promise does not reflect practice .

Third of all, as stated above, Saddam did bad things, but while he was in power there was order, water, electrcity, no street war between millitants and the US army, and at least 600,000 Iraqis were alive.

So if we never know if there's WNDs then its just a theory and therefore not a valid reason, oh i think Obama is actually hiding inside the Lincon memorial , lets cut him up and find out since we'll never know otherwise and we can't take that chance, if you can't find Osama then oh well the memorial will fix itself like the 600,000dead iraqis

Final thing, America has never had a major war on its land for 150 years, it's easy for those who never been to war, lost friends, family,or an arm to it to support it.

Concindentally BUSH, wolfgang, and channey had all never been to war. (bush was in a champagne regiment)

Answer 2

Given the battles between warring factions there, and continued incitements by Iran, the US continues to fight destabilizing armed groups in the country. Despite popular elections and reduced terrorism, the military of the US has more to do before reducing its role in favor of Iraqi forces.

Iraq is still unstable and a unilateral withdrawal would mean dire consequences for the civilian population, and could encourage direct action by Iran. The country needs to have a popular leadership and a stable political structure to resist the influence of the many radical elements in the region.

Answer 3

Many of the religious extremists want the whole world to become Islamic and if we don't want it, they are willing to kill themselves in an effort to destroy any non-believers. That's us.

If we are fighting them OVER THERE, they won't come OVER HERE to try to kill us. Our military is doing an exceptional job of protecting us from the religious extremists. If we stop fighting this war now, the religious extremists will be far more likely to bring the war here.

Iraq really doesn't have a military yet. If the US pulls the troops out now, Iraq will have no defense from an invasion of a country like Iran.

Answer 4

One answer is that, there having been no good reason for the US to have invaded Iraq in the first place, there is no good reason for keeping US troops there now, especially given that their presence in a Muslim land is a great recruiting tool for al Quaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups. Defenders of the idea of keeping US troops in Iraq might argue that, having "broken" the country, we have a moral duty to help put it back together, and that US presence in Iraq will cause neighbors such as Syria and Iran to think twice about sponsoring terrorism.