I think the real reason for the war was simple. They wanted to show the middle east who was boss. You had many leaders at that time outright calling for the destruction of the US. The most vocal of whom being Saddam. Furthermore, Saddam tried to assasinate Bush Sr. Basically, the Bush administration has a plan for how the middle east should be and that does not include a dictatorship ran by Saddam.
There may have been some noble intentions to. Similar to those that thought it would be good for the Vietnamese to be invaded by the US instead of being communist. Which again is debatable if you look at Cambodia where there was no invasion, things didn't really work out so well for Cambodia. Saddam Hussein was afterall responsible for the deaths of about 500k Kurds and was "arabizing" the country by killing off inhabitants and replacing them with Sunni arabs. THen again you have the argument that people should resolve these things for themselves, but look at how well that has worked in Darfur.
Oil was a factor. Not because the US necessarily wanted that oil, but didnt like the idea of a dictator sitting on that much wealth.
Although there was no real terrorist threat at the time in Iraq, Iraq was responsible for funding terrorists. For instance, the gave direct funding to Hamas, which the US considers to be a terrorist organization. This of course brings Israel into the mix. Israel was obviously not opposed to a war on Iraq. Israel is a close ally that has gone to war for the US before. Also, other allies like Saudi Arabia would not have been opposed to this war. Iraq has always been a threat to the Saudis. In fact, there parties name was Ba'ath (spelling?) which translates into return of the great arab state. Iraq chose to exercise this return through military dictatorship and invasion (including eventual invasion of Saudi Arabia).
On top of all this you have the problem that Iraq was ignoring UN sanctions.
As for WMDs? Iraq may have had these in the end, but nobody will ever now. The US essentially gave Iraq about 3 weeks to move the weapons out and into Syria. The announced their intention before they actually invaded. They have found evidence that weapons were there at one point such as storage facilities with alluminum tubes designed to store poison gases. I think in the end this was a minor factor contributing to the willingness of the adminstration to go to war.
|
