Why are we in a war with Iraq?

**Pat** · 06-26-2009, 06:56 PM

Please don't make fun of me... I have never understood it all.
The explanation that makes the most sense gets ten points

**Black Angelo** · 06-26-2009, 06:57 PM

Senior G. Bush asked his war-monger son to invade iraq just for OIL.

**The First Dragon** · 06-26-2009, 06:57 PM

It's like this:
After 9/11, the US woke up to the fact that, not only is terrorism dangerous, but it can also happen on US soil. It is not something limited to foreign countries.
Therefore, after virtually neutralizing Al Qaeda, the immediate culprit, the President and his advisers thought about how and where the next terror attack might develop, and how to keep it away from US soil.
One thing they decided was that they needed to take action against international Islamist Terrorists, since that is the kind of terrorists that posed the greatest threat to the US. They decided that Iraq was a significant source for exporting terrorism. Under Saddam Hussein, it was a classic "terrorist state." It practiced terror and even used weapons of mass destruction against its own citizens. Torture and rape were institutionalized. Besides that, Saddam used to finance Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. He would pay $25,000 to the family of each suicide bomber. $25,000 goes a long way in Gaza and West Bank. This in spite of the fact that Saddam was Sunni and Hamas is Shiite. Denomination made no difference to Saddam.
He permitted a variety of terrorist groups to train and arm themselves in Iraq; even Al Qaeda.
So they decided that a good way to disrupt global terrorism was to take out the terrorist state, Iraq. This, as you may recall, took 3 weeks.
Now, once you have removed the government of a country, you have to replace it with another; and that is what is taking so long.
There is something called "The Pottery Barn doctrine. You break it, you buy it." This means if you take out the government, you are obligated to re-stabilize the country before leaving it on its own. I think it sounds fair.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, BTW, Qaddaffi of Libya volunteered to give up all WMD and subject Libya to neutral inspections. Libya was another classic terrorist state, but Qaddaffi chose the course of prudence.
He reason the war in Iraq continued was that Saddam's old confederates wanted to get back in power, so the fought against the changes. Although the Sunni ruled Iraq under Saddam, the Shiites were the majority, and now they wanted a voice; and not all of them were interested in democracy.
[I don't want to give the impression that religious groups are so evil; but in cases like this, the religion is used in a political sense.]
So, having removed the terrorist Saddam dictatorship, and being obligated to put another government in place rather than leave the nation in anarchy, they decided to institute a democracy.
In fact, most Iraqis were enthusiastically in favor of this, but still scared of the terror groups which they were used to. They voted in overwhelming numbers at the risk of their lives. They argued and fought and many of the new government officials were murdered, predictably. They were willing to give their lives to bring a better system to Iraq.
So, that's why the US is in Iraq now. Helping the new government stabilize itself.
And meanwhile, the Islamist terrorists were horrified to see an Arab nation being turned into a democracy instead of a theocracy. [Saddam's government wasn't a theocracy, but at least it wasn't a democracy!]
They then felt that Iraq was their priority, not making attacks in the US.
Together with improved intelligence and police methods, this helped prevent another terrorist attack in the US. I would never have predicted that at the time. I assumed that there would be more terror attacks on US soil. So I have to say, they did achieve their goal of keeping the US safe. So far.
[For those that say OIL is the issue, then the war has been an abject failure. We haven't gotten oil from Iraq yet. And if we had wanted Iraqi oil, we could simply have bought it from Saddam, as France did. Much cheaper than war.]

06-26-2009, 06:57 PM

It is oil my dear. There's so much oil in the middle east that America needs to control that as America is highly dependent on oil. Hence america need to control the price and the volume.
Many arab countries are yes men to america and they open the 'tap' when america wants a drink, and throttle it down a little when america does not want to drink that much. One such 'donkey' for america to ride on is Quwait.
Sadam hussein is a dictator, and hated the other chicken, yellow bellied arab leaders and decided to slaughter the 'donkey'. America will have to jump off the saddle and protect the donkey. So they go to war in iraq. Kill Sadam. And not only save the donkey, they have a new donkey (still trying to make one out of it) which is iraq herself.
And now america is eyeing another stallion to be turned into a donkey. Iran.