Discord, Disharmony and Disaster

The Iraq conflict started 5 years ago a few days ago. This conflict has become a unmitigated disaster, and has involved the death of some 4003 Americans, (This includes eight that the Pentagon has not officially confirmed) and over million Iraqis. There are also millions other Iraqis that are refugees, both inside and outside Iraq. The continuing of this conflict is short sighted and wasteful, in terms of both money and human life.

Everything about this conflict has been a disaster. From its poor planning to its deceitful selling has been a disaster. Many of the quotes used by the Bush administration to sell the war have become infamous, like Condoleezza Rice’s classic “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”. Even though there was strong evidence before the invasion that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. (Iraq had even started to destroy its newest ballistic missile, the Al-Samoud 2, destroying at least 34 of these missiles) President Bush still invaded Iraq.

This invasion started with the now infamous “Shock and Awe”. This was a campaign using American aircraft and missiles to quickly and efficiently wreck havoc on Iraq. I personally find the doctrine of shock and awe despicable. I have many reasons for saying this, because among other things it cheapens the cost of war for America, (in human life anyway (which is probably the only metric that most people care about) thus making America more likely to wage war. Shock and Awe also creates pretty (for the average American anyway) pictures of the bad guys (again this is in the mind of the average American) getting their asses kicked. Never mind that even the most advanced guided missiles and “smart bombs” can go off target, and still can cause collateral damage. Tactics like “Shock and Awe” also lead to the perception among America’s enemies that the only way to hurt the United States would be via unconventional warfare methods like suicide bombings against civilian targets. Shock and Awe creates a situation in which the United States can wage war with little or no cost, and can make claims about how their bombs are only hitting “Evil” targets, thus providing low cost easy to swallow war for the American people, with the added bonus for the pro war cause of having propaganda pictures for the masses showing America kicking ass. While the United States, like all nations needs be able to defend its self, the US should away from Shock and Awe as its main military offensive strategy, because in the long run, such tactics will only make us more enemies.

America has also made additional enemies in southwest Asia, through other aspects of its handling of the Iraq war. The continued American occupation of Iraq makes the US look like an imperial power. Additional American human rights abuses in Iraq and in other aspects of the war on terror especially the images out of Abu Ghraib prison. This has degraded the US’s moral authority. China has even defended its policy of torturing it’s own prisoners based on our use of torture on terrorism suspects.

In closing, the US has to get out of Iraq now, if it wants to rebuild any of its lost image or place in the world.