Just Cause to Invade Iraq

We have seen our country taken into a war that has forever changed the way we think and live. The attack on the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon turned out to be a seminal moment in the way America lives, travels, fights and endures as a nation in much the same way as Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into the Second World War.  Just as we took on the Nazis and the Japanese after the attack on America’s Pacific fleet, we have taken on foes that have threatened us by striking and murdering over 3,000 Americans and friends.

After the attacks on the World Trade center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 America was faced with a great lack of choices other than all out war to root out terrorist, wherever they posed a threat to our national security. President Bush laid out a new doctrine that clearly stated and specified that not just those who blow up bombs are terrorists, but also, those who harbor, provide safe passage and those who provide funding and weaponry are complicit in terrorism and are themselves terrorists.  It was on the basis of this new declaration that the regime in Baghdad was providing and aiding America’s enemy in past and future attacks that President George W. Bush planned and executed his war against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

The strategy for which America has invested so much blood and treasure and the logical and well-reasoned reasons for doing so should be a huge story. This should be on the front page of every serious newspaper. But almost no mention of our successes has ever been told and little time has been spent looking at the positive side of the war.  Even now, as it has been reported that the violence in Iraq has declined by as much as 80%, all that I can read is that the congress wants to tie the President’s hands and force him to pull our troops out.  So let’s look at a few of the reasons why this war is so important for the future of the United States.
On March 12, 2002, the Associated Press quoted Baghdad's Al-Iraq newspaper's report that deputy minister Tariq Aziz said that payments had been made to suicide bomber families in Palestine since 2000 and recently had been increased.  Based on the Bush doctrine of going after any government that assisted or abetted terrorists in the Middle-East, America had clear evidence and grounds for the war itself. Saddam’s past financial aiding and abetting of terrorist movements and suicide bombers in the Middle East provided a clear and certain and justified argument for the Bush Administration to invade Iraq and to disarm and displace the regime of Saddam Hussein.  While I was in Israel and Palestine in 2002, I spoke with Palestinians and Jewish people who said that the fact of Saddam’s complicity was easily verifiable and abundantly evident. I covered two suicide bombings and it was widely reported that Saddam had been funding the families of the murderous bombers to encourage the killers.  Several families stated that they had been approached by envoys of the Iraqi regime to receive up to $35,000.00 for the families of such suicide bombers.

In addition, a study of the development of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s use of such weapons against its own people and against Iran in the Iran/Iraq war provided undeniable proof of Iraqi complicity in terrorism and grants legitimacy to the invasion of Iraq.  It demonstrates that the war was both proper and necessary to protect the United States and its allies.  There have been reports of chemical warfare from the Gulf War since the early months of Iraq’s invasion of Iran. In August 1988, Hussein launched chemical attacks against defenseless men, women and children in Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq, the best known and most widely publicized of which was the genocidal bombing of Halabca. International groups ascertained he used mustard gas and Sarin.  No one knows how many Kurds died as a result of these attacks. Some estimates place the dead at 8,000 while others say up to 24,000. The key is to remember the attacks weren't against military foes, but used specifically to kill and to terrorize noncombatants who were Iraqi citizens themselves. The Kurdish civilians had not had even the basic and inadequate protections carried by some Iranian soldiers.

In November 1980, Tehran Radio was broadcasting allegations of Iraqi chemical bombing at Susangerd. Three and a quarter years later, by which time the outside world was listening more seriously to such charges, the Iranian Foreign Minister told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that there had been at least 49 instances of Iraqi chemical-warfare attacks in 40 border regions, and that the documented dead totaled 109 people, with hundreds more wounded. He made this statement on the 16th of February, 1984, the day on which Iran launched a major offensive on the central front, and one week before the start of offensives and counter-offensives further south, in the border marshlands to the immediate north of Basra where, Iraq has vast untapped oil reserves. According to official Iranian statements during the 31 days following the Foreign Minister's allegation, Iraq used chemical weapons on at least 14 further occasions, adding more than 2200 to the total number of people wounded by poison gas.

One of the chemical-warfare instances reported by Iran, at Hoor-ul-Huzwaizeh on  March 13, 1984 has since been conclusively verified by an international team of specialists dispatched to Iran by the United Nations Secretary General. The evidence gathered in the report by the UN team lends substantial credence to Iranian allegations of Iraqi chemical warfare on at least six other occasions during the period from February 26 to 17 March, 1984. 

During the first Persian Gulf War, Saddam threatened to use his chemical arsenal against the coalition arrayed against him. The United States said if he did he should expect an instant, overwhelming allied response. Hussein apparently backed down -- while some people may suspect he used chemicals on coalition forces, no proof has been found.

Following the war, U.N. inspectors went into Iraq and huge stockpiles of chemical weapons were found. The Iraqis had large caches of mustard gas, which causes casualties by blistering or burning exposed skin, eyes, lungs and mucus membranes within hours of exposure. It is a persistent agent that can remain a hazard for days.

Iraq also had large amounts of saran and tabun. When absorbed through the skin or inhaled, these nerve agents cause convulsions and unconsciousness. Tabun is a persistent agent and can remain potent for days. While not persistent, saran is more dangerous when inhaled.  The inspectors also found large amounts of VX nerve agent, which is more toxic and persistent than sarin or tabun.  Saddam also had the chemical agents in aerial bombs, 122 mm rockets, artillery shells and Scud ballistic missiles.  The Iraqi chemical attacks of the Iran-Iraq War were the largest since World War I. During the 1914-18 war, both sides packed artillery shells with gases or rolled generators up to the front lines.

Terrorism has always been present in the world.  From the Barbarians eventual sacking of Rome to the loss of three thousand souls in the greatest tragedy of our days, Terrorism has been a source of fear, attack and veritable war in the world we inhabit.  All Terrorism is a marriage of crime and war.  The terrorists of the Middle East are for the most part peasants and land dwellers who are embittered at the lack of freedom in their respective countries and who blame it all on the West, and primarily on the United States.  The reasons for war and the underlying cause for the appearance of suicidal mercenaries at war with Israel and the United States is criminal and savage but the strength of its appeal rest in religion.  In a real sense, terrorism today is rooted in fanaticism and money.  Take a lunatic and place him in the street with a couple of guns and watch the mayhem that arrives.  Make him a religious zealot and watch how devoted he becomes to it.  Give him unlimited funds and watch how efficient he becomes at it.  Terrorism is not an enemy that only kills our soldiers, as awful as that is in itself.  In fact, it is an army of murders who count no opponent as a soft target and never takes prisoners.  Indeed, terrorism is not interested in a popular front or some groundswell of popular approval.  In actuality, it is a war against innocent people that does not seek to win followers, but rather seeks to terrify a timid world into capitulation.  Thus far it has failed due in full measure to the Resolve of the United States, the mighty courage of our troops and the coalition of the willing.

Today, it appears that many in our government seem to believe that once Iraq is settle that the war on terror will be over.  Many feel that we should bring our troops home and do the ostrich dance of sticking our heads in the sand while forgetting that in doing so we expose our hinder parts.  Though Iraq and Afghanistan has been two large bites of the bitter dish of a war we did not ask for, but from which re have not retreated.  There are many more, possibly far more difficult and embittered battles yet to fight.  Can you imagine a country like Iran with a lethal and developed nuclear arsenal?  Unless America takes down such enemies while they can still be removed without resorting to nuclear war, then we shall reap the tears of cowardice and lack of resolve.  America is a land that cherishes life and peace.  Yet, we have not realized that the absence of war does not equal peace.  There is only one solution to terrorists who do not fear death.  That is to give them what they crave for all of us.  So, before we call our troops home and before certain congressional leader proclaim the war as lost, let them look at what we have done and the clear and present reasons why we did it.  Any honorable and truly patriotic leader of this country will conclude that America has done the right thing.  The greatest fear of all is perhaps that America has a serious shortage of such leaders right now who would stay the course long after the current administration turns out its lights.  If such a deficit of leadership and resolve fills the halls of congress or sits behind the large desk in the Oval Office, it will have been we the people who placed them there and we the people shall have no one to blame but ourselves.

Steven Clark Bradley lived abroad for over 17 years and has been to 34 countries, including Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey. He has a master's degree in liberal studies from Indiana University. He speaks French and Turkish. He has been an assistant to a prosecutor, a university instructor and a freelance journalist in Ramallah, Palistine, Israel, Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan. Steven is the author of three novels, Nimrod Rising, Probable Cause and Stillborn! available through publishamerica.com, borders, barnesandnoble and Amazon. His website is http://www.stevenbradley.net