Griffin Smith

GVPT200

Blog #2

     In “What Caused the Iraq War? A Debate”, Alexandre Debs and Nuno P. Monteiro make what amounts to a very thorough analysis of U.S. motivations for invading Iraq in 2003 while creating dialogue with David Lake in order to better rationalize the reasons for war via process of elimination.  These IR scholars came to the conclusion that the Bush Administration’s, and ultimately America’s, motives for invasion were centered on the threat of a nuclearized Iraq.  For the purpose of this essay, I will support this conclusion as well as use the threat of a nuclear Iraq as a jumping-off point to analyze the other motivations behind the U.S. involvement.

     To even begin to try and understand what catalyzed the Iraq war (which I may refer to interchangeably as the Second Gulf War), it is essential that we examine and more importantly understand the context that these events occurred in, the national mindset at the time leading up to the invasion, and the ontological threat that was posed to the United States by Al Qaeda and other related Islamic terror groups.  The central reason for U.S. military action in Iraq was to make certain that Saddam Hussein would not have access to weapons of mass destruction.  The discussion over the true motivations must go further however, to encompass the viability of a pre-emptive strike, the predicted cost-benefit tradeoff for invasion, the lucrative prospect of creating a beacon of democracy in Iraq to quell issues in the volatile Middle East, and the fear felt by the United States after 9/11 – more specifically the fear that Al Qaeda could acquire a nuclear weapon.  One of the biggest issues with the contemporary debate about what motivated the Second Gulf War is the same issue that often surfaces when discussing historical events – people make judgments on past events by viewing them through the lens of the present.  It is easy to, as the saying goes; second-guess a decision from an armchair, especially with 20/20 hindsight.  If we truly wish to understand, we must compare and contrast the decisions made with the sentiments and limited information present at that time.

     Firstly, the matter of the results of the U.N. inspections for WMDs; while it is a popular statement to declare outright that the U.N. inspections yielded absolutely that there were no WMDs in Iraq, the assertion of this claim is flawed for two reasons: (1) The U.N. inspections were not firm in their assessment, were slow, and were seen by some in U.S. command as unreliable, so to say that the U.S. rushed prematurely into Iraq would be a more accurate statement than to say that the U.S. blatantly defied purely scientific U.N. inspection results.  (2) If a good part of America’s aim was to prevent Saddam for acquiring WMDs rather than disarming him of WMDs that may or may not have been present, than the results of the U.N. inspections are not as important in the debate because the war would have been a product of a pre-emptive strike rather than a response action.

     Secondly, those who wish to understand the Second Gulf War must look past whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMDs and examine why the U.S. would have cared if he did.  As was discussed in the dialogue between Debs and Monteiro and Lake, North Korea and Iran were also emerging as possible nuclear threats, so why Iraq?  What made Iraq a priority over these two states?  The best answer is as follows.  From 9/11 to early 2003, the number of Islamic radicals in the Middle East and Central Asia was surging, as was their will to enact jihad against the West.  American forces deployed in Afghanistan and in smaller numbers in other regions of the Middle East and Africa were in a very difficult position as they waged an unconventional war against militants who concealed themselves among the populace, were nearly impossible to pinpoint or gather intelligence on, and who were stalwart in their goals.  It was unofficially concluded therefore that fighting a war of attrition would be impractical and impossible.  Enter the discussion of possible WMDs in Iraq, a potent threat not so much because of Saddam Hussein’s regime but because of the predominately Shi’ite population of his country and the volatile nature of the Middle East.  In the minds of U.S. decision makers, WMDs in a region that was the hotbed of an ideological war created an extremely dangerous situation.  Comparatively, Iran and North Korea were not perceived to be as dangerous as Iraq.  Iran was a powerful and legitimate state which had not fully developed nuclear capabilities and was far more stable than Iraq, although it was in the same region.  North Korea was an unrelated enemy; it had no ties to Middle East turmoil and was “tied down” by South Korea and China.  Furthermore, the predicted cost of entering a war was low (At the time, U.S. high command knew nothing of the complex internal issues in Iraq concerning the Sunni-Shi’a conflict, the resulting insurgency, etc.). 

     Finally, an enormous part of the rationale for invading Iraq was the lucrative possibility that creating a stable democracy might pacify the Middle East to prevent future violence and promote the spread of secular government.  This was especially important at the time because in many of the countries that U.S. forces were present to fight Islamic terrorists, while the population generally hated the militants for killing civilians and causing physical damage, the populace was still more likely to trust or aid the terrorists simply because they were of the same race and were Muslim.  A democratic Iraq may well have been the key to building trust in order to more effectively combat Al Qaeda.  Ironically, the Iraq war proved more of a hindrance to amiable relations with indigenous personnel and left a scar on the international image of the United States.