The War in Iraq

In April of 1920, Allied Nations coming out of World War I met at the San Remo Peace Conference. It was here that a mandate involving France’s desire to hold Syria and Lebanon and Great Britain’s desire to hold the lands of Palestine, Transjordan, and Mesopotamia was born. Britain’s holdings were renamed Iraq, which was created out of the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra. In October of 1932, Iraq gained formal independence under Faysal I and through the League of Nations becoming its own separate country. In the years to follow, the Iraqi Oil industry flourished providing the country with its main source of income and making the Middle East as a whole the richest source of petroleum on earth. Iraq would continue with its booming oil industry even while under the constant threat of guerrilla attacks against it by neighboring countries and opposing Arab factions within the country. It would even survive a war with the United States, but with constant accusations of possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction and bombings by the US and Britain through the ‘90s, Iraq would eventually fall. Not for the possession of WMDs, not for leading Terrorist actions against those who would invade, and not even for the United Nations sanctioning it, because none of those things happened and Iraq was no enemy or threat to anyone. It fell because the grass is always greener on the other side, even when that grass isn’t green at all, but black. The real enemy, the real aggressor, the real evil in any war is not a people whose sole goal is to protect their family, country, and freedom, but any person who seeks to steal these things from any human being for the sole purpose of furthering their own ambitions and agendas. "The relentless demonization of Saddam Hussein over the last decade or so imparted a deeply personal flavor to the conflict with Iraq" (Anderson 34). Since the first Gulf War ended in 1991, which was under the first Bush Administration, the United States and Great Britain began a period of constant pressuring upon the Iraqi government in which the accusations of that government being a terrorist organization was brought before the United Nations. Privatizations of Iraq’s oil sectors would have been a huge business deal for anyone who could seize control of them, for Iraq’s petroleum reserves were second only to Saudi-Arabia in the world, a fact... ... middle of paper ... ... foreseen, but how has that response shaped the world and honored the dead? “To respond to a terrorist's grievous violation of the social order with further violations of that order means the terrorist has won.” (Carroll 127). We “won” the struggle, but did we really “win”? We have changed the world and written history, and freedom has definitely been gained, but for whom? WMDs were never found, terrorism was looked for too late and then in the wrong place. All to stop a threat that wasn’t there, or was it, just where we didn’t check to look, the threat, the enemy, the “axis of evil” was right here, at home. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ accessed: 10-13-04. http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/iraqwar.html 2002 by The Regents of the University of Michigan. All Rights Reserved accessed: 10-13-04. Fahrenheit 9/11 Directed by Michael Moore Distributed by Lions Gate Films Released: June 25th Carroll, James Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War. Metropolitan Books: New York, 2004. Anderson, Liam The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship. Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2004. Bamford, James A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies. Doubleday: New York, 2004.