America's Failed Strategy in the Middle East Free Essay Example

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Why did the USA fail to achieve its primary strategic objectives in Iraq after 2003?

The war in Iraq of 2003 was and remains one big controversy that the foreign policy has ever undertaken by two countries the United States and the United Kingdom. The international community was divided into two parts, countries like France, Germany, Russia, and China were against this conflict. It’s been 16 years since the beginning of the most unfortunate episodes of the last century: the Iraqi war. This action followed the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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From the documents and history, this war seemed to have caused much of the current troubles in the Middle East. After winning the 2000 presidential elections, Bush declared Iraq one of the top security priorities.

In January 1998, the neoconservatives made a project for a New American Century (PNAC), that focused in USA foreign policy, its goal was to promote American Global Leadership, this was a project for new USA century, which finished in 2006. Bush administration approached 10 of 25 signatories of PNAC.

After this historic view of the Iraqi War, the aims of this essay are to assess: Why the USA fail to achieve its primary strategic objectives in Iraq after 2003? There were some objectives to achieve by USA in Iraq: in order to have international security, Bush administration wanted to stop WMD in Iraq, so Bush became obsessed with promoting this idea, he lied about WMD. People, who have served in the US government know how hard is to keep anything secret in the White House, so even for the conspiracy to lie about Sadam’s WMD.

(The Guardian, Tue 26 Feb 2013). The other objectives were to change the system from a dictatorial into democratic one. Increase the security in all the levels, rebuild the country and transform the Middle East. First In 20 march 2003, Iraqi was attacked with the mission, to control weapons of mass destruction and to fight terrorism. Different reports of USA secret services revealed that, Iraqi was developing weapons of mass destruction, latter resulted in false, made possible to begin this conflict. America suspected, that Iraq could develop WMD, especially after the UN weapon inspectors were kicked out in 1998 from Hussein.

The United Nations than commissioned Hans Blix a Swedish diplomat to scour Iraq from WMD. They reported that no WMD were found, but the US had already attacked Iraq. It has been suspected that Iraq had hundreds of bombs, thousands of artilleries, rackets, some scud ballistic missiles, and biological and chemical weapons. After the Iraqi war it was revealed, that Iraq stopped developing nuclear weapons after 1991 and destroyed chemical and biological ones. 1Another objective of the USA was to change the dictatorial regime in Iraq. Saddam Hussein repeatedly entered in the group of most brutal dictators of our time. He started two wars, Iran-Iraq, when 100,000 Iraqi’s were lost. In the invasion of the Iraqi army in Kuwait, Hussein destroyed 20-30,000 Kurdish and Shiite rebels using chemical weapons against civilians. In Iraq was no civil liberty, the dictator destroyed political opponents, torture was widely used in Iraqi prisons. Also, Iraqi was a good supporter of international terrorism, there was provided training facilities and political support to numerous terrorist groups like Mujahidin, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, Al- Chanda and provided asylum to terrorists.

Iraq could have been a good example for the other countries of the Middle East. One of the most ardent advocates of war on Iraq was Richard Perle a neoconservative, which helped to push America into the Iraq war. In an interview for 1The Guardian he refused to share the blame for the catastrophic consequences of his ideas about the Iraq invasion. The need to transform the whole Middle East as the neoconservatives including Pearl wanted, they believed that states and people in the Middle East feel like outsiders, different from the west. According to neoconservatives, this situation was the result of the underdevelopment of democratic institutions in these states, the religious conflicts, the prevalence of dictators, lack of press freedom, virtual lack of civil society, which blocked the development of the economy, culture etc. According to neoconservatives the US and the West must bring “the seeds of democracy” The creation of a democratic Iraqi state could create a chain reaction and change the entire region.

Rebuild the country was one of the objectives of USA policymakers, Iraqi reconstruction would follow the lines of post-war countries. Many Iraqi’s people were not happy with the freedom, because they saw the US bases settled permanently there, as a sign of occupation or recolonization by people, that didn’t understand and respect their language or religion. A country when the Geneva Convention was violated because, an occupier must obey the nation’s laws and has no rights to his assets. There were lots of business people from the US, South Korea, Italy, Turkey, that try to use Iraqi assets. The resistance of Iraq in 2003 in summer was strengthened, it pointed to destroy the interests of foreigners. In 2004, more than 170 of these people had been kidnapped, murdered, or disappeared, so the dream of a democratic Iraq vanished. It is interesting to analyze the causes and effects of this war. If we see the story from the beginning, the causes of the war realized that it had little to do with the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

To spread democracy or satisfy the oil or Israel lobbies and a quick victory in the heart of the Arab world, to make know regimes like Syria, Iran, North Korea, that the Americans were there to stay. The Iraqi War was motivated by the desire of establishing the American power, it was an inner desire of Americans specially after 9/11 because their military and economic symbols were destroyed and humiliated. The Bush administration felt that the United States needed to reassert its position as a superpower. This war caused lots of victims, civil and innocent people payed with their life’s freedom from Saddam Hussein and the civil war that plagued after. The political policies carried out by America inflamed tension in that region. The United States was unable to reconstruct Iraq after the invasion.

There is a security vacuum, so if you don’t belong to a group, you’re not safe. Years later the conflict the main actors, which took place have written books to remember those days. President Bush himself in his book “Decisive Moments” reiterates that, …. I think, that this is a sad chapter of our history and must never be repeated again. In the same book George W Bush says that: “Unfortunately we didn’t know much”. “…. In decisive moments you don’t have that priority… “President Bush accepted to be guilty, when he said that. “The nature of history is that we understand the effects after we already acted”. Bush realised that, they made two mistakes, one was the failure of secret services, making unfair reports for the weapons of mass destructions. The other mistake was that the United Nations didn’t play an important role to prevent the Iraqi War.