War for all the Wrong Reasons

War for all the Wrong Reasons

Why might the United States start a war with Iraq? Would this war be fought for legitimate causes or are there alternative reasons behind the war that the vast majority of the public are not aware of? These are a few questions that coincide with the questionable intensions of the Bush administration. The public of America can be swayed to support the war on Iraq because the government has control over the media, but with a little research it is not hard to find many reasons why a war on Iraq would be fought for all the wrong reasons.

To fully understand why there should be no war, it is vital to know the history of U.S.-Iraq relations. The U.S. has been involved with Iraq since its beginning. Iraq came into existence after WWI. There was an agreement made by Britain with Arab leaders that if they fought against Turkish rulers, the British would help them create an independent state after the war was over. The U.S. entered into WWI on Britain’s side under the conditions that after the war, the U.S. would receive its economic and political demands, one demand was access to oil. Iraq was created and became Britain’s colony. Its oil was divided between Britain, France, Holland, and the U.S. Iraq kept none of its own oil and this remained until the revolution in 1958. After WWII, Britain was severely weakened while the U.S. grew increasingly more powerful. The U.S. saw this as an opportunity to dominate Iraq and establish itself in the world as a powerful nation. The Roosevelt and Truman administrations had a strategy to have the U.S. succeed in being dominant within the world. The key elements in their strategy were first gain U.S. military superiority in nuclear and conventional weaponry; then have...

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...nyone, the people have been suffering from the sanctions since the Gulf War, and a war would just cause many more innocent civilians to die. This is a story of a very large powerful country attempting to control the world. It is more important to save the lives of innocent people than to have control of the world’s largest oil supply. This is why a war with Iraq would be for all the wrong reasons.

Works Cited

Eland, Ivan. “Top 10 Reasons Not to "Do" Iraq”. Cato Press. 19 Aug. 2002.

Kelber, Harry. “Pres. Bush Offers Flimsy Reasons For Waging a Reckless War Against Iraq”. LaborTalk. 21 Aug. 2002.

Kutner, Jeremy. “Ramifications of Iraq War”. The Yale Daily News. 7 Nov. 2002.

Zunes, Stephen . “Seven Reasons to Oppose a U.S. Invasion of Iraq”. Foreign Policy in Focus.