Why I don't support the War in Iraq Part I...

March 2007 marked the beginning of the fifth year of a war that Bush said was over in May of 2003. When this war began, we as Americans were led to believe that this war would not last very long or result in many American casualties. I believe that this was due at least in part to the under-estimation of the situation in Iraq by former U.S. officials who were key planners of the Iraq occupation. If the U.S. government believed that the situation was not that bad, it only makes sense that the American people would come to believe that as well.

According to the above link, deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz said: “[I]n postwar planning, [U.S.] defense officials made three assumptions that ‘turned out to underestimate the problem,’ beginning with the belief that removing Saddam Hussein from power would also remove the threat posed by his Baath Party. In addition, they erred in assuming that significant numbers of Iraqi army units, and large numbers of Iraqi police, would quickly join the U.S. military and its civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq”. While this was good to know at the time, it most certainly did not fix the problem that we had just not anticipated a war of this scale and thus did not send out enough troops. The resulting situation in Iraq has only worsened in the past four years.

The basis of the rationale for going to war with Iraq formed around the belief that Saddam had an arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) at his disposal and that he was linked to terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and thus he posed a significant threat to the countries surrounding Iraq and to the world. The WMDs were never found and the links between Saddam and Al Quaeda have since been disproved. Two of the main reasons this war was started were based on information that later was found to be untrue. This leaves more to be desired from the Bush Administration with regards to rationale for the war.

It’s also important to mention that we went to war without approval from the United Nations and the Iraq War is considered by the UN to be “illegal”. The primary ally of the U.S. throughout this war has been the UK, but with the announcement made in February of 2007 that the UK will be pulling all of its troops out of Iraq by the end of this year, its looking like the only major military presence in Iraq will be the U.S. This stacks the odds of achieving democracy in Iraq further and further against us. Fighting without others supporting us is pointless.