The hope and change Barack Obama promised us in 2008 has proved to be hopelessness and regression.  Say what you will about George W. Bush, but the undeniable truth is that his policies were not nearly as flawed as the current POTUS.

 

Barack Obama has turned Iraq into a bloodbath.  Nearly every week the reports come in of people being murdered in sectarian violence.  How is that Barack Obama's fault?  His rapid withdrawal of all of our troops led to a power vacuum in the streets resulting in vicious fighting going largely unchallenged.  We still have many people there, but not soldiers or tanks.  You might start screaming, "Bush lied, people died!"  How exactly did he lie?  The evidence he based his decision on is the same information that prompted this prominent Democrat to vote for it in the Senate.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkS9y5t0tR0&w=420&h=315

 

She casted it with conviction.  There goes the argument against George W. Bush.

 

The handling of the war after the fall of Saddam Hussein was a disaster.  The looting, the lack of a comprehensive strategy to get the country back on its feet, and most importantly the hesitation to destroy the enemy all contributed to a calamity.  I would agree with Bush detractors here.  I am not a blind aggrandizer of Bush.  But I will not tolerate ignorance of the basis for going to war.  Most people are completely clueless about the first part of the Iraq war.  Being a historian, I know something about this issue, as it was the topic of one my research papers in graduate school.

 

In August of 1990, Saddam Hussein brutally invaded Kuwait.  The Kuwaiti people suffered greatly during this invasion.  The world watched in horror as Saddam's troops killed, raped, and plundered this small Persian Gulf country.  President George HW Bush was in office at the time, and as a veteran of WWII, he knew what it would mean for the world if the United States, and the rest of the world did not unite and repel this invasion.  Appeasement of Hitler led to WWII and by waiting to act, courtesy of Woodrow Wilson and the flaccid League of Nations, it took years to defeat Hitler at the cost of million of lives.  The lesson learned, and applied.  Saddam had to be stopped so he would not go further.  Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, and Yemen would all be in the crosshairs.  Eventually, Saddam may have renewed his war with Iran.

 

For years Iran and Iraq were at war.  Iraq was the aggressor, not Iran.  Hundreds of thousands died.  Many people were blinded by the chemical weapons used in this war.  It was awful.  No mercy was shown.  The same ruthlessness occurred in Kuwait.  Kuwait had no chance to defend itself.  At the time, Iraq had the 5th largest standing military in the world.  With massive capability and a proven murderous attitude, the world understood that he was not bluffing.

 

Now you may be saying we were friends with Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war.  This is true.  This was not, however, because we liked Saddam.  We supported him because he was killing the Iranians.  This was a proxy war.  Iran had rubbed our noses in it for over a year by overrunning our embassy in Iran and taking our people hostage.  Our support of Saddam was payback.  Tragically, Saddam viewed this friendliness as license to do as he pleased.

 

Saddam invaded Kuwait under the pretext that Kuwait was violating oil rights in the territory between Iraq and Kuwait.  This was an excuse because after the treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI the people of Iraq felt that their borders should include Kuwait.  This territory claim was obviously not observed.  Saddam wanted to rectify this error in his eyes and seize all of Kuwait and all of its oil.

 

The argument against going to war revolved around many things, but the primary reason was not to send our soldiers into war for oil.  I know because I protested the war in college before becoming independent.  The fallacy of this argument was fairly simple.  Whether we like it or not, the world economy's lifeblood is oil.  It is essential to our standard of living and impacts everything we do.  Sad, but true.  Giving Saddam control over a vast amount of the world's access to middle east oil was not acceptable to us or over 100 other countries in the world.  The US Congress authorized the action (though no formal declaration of war was obtained, a valid constitutional argument), the UN authorized the action with over 100 votes, and the public in general supported it.

 

Operation Desert Storm was a resounding success.  Casualties were kept to a minimum (soldiers dying is never a good thing, but we lost far fewer than was expected), our military coined the term 'shock and awe', and the whole world got to see our devastating conventional military power.  Saddam was defeated very quickly.  But the mission was to repel him from Kuwait, not to remove him from power.  This would prove to be a gigantic mistake.  The war ended in a ceasefire.  Just like how the Korean war ended.

 

The armistice that was worked with Saddam had several provisions to it.  Over the course of the next 12 years, Saddam broke every provision that he agreed to.  The UN website has all of these armistice violations available for you to read, but the point is he was not adhering to the ceasefire.  He gave inspectors the run around, hiding weapons, scientists, and doing everything he could to not cooperate.  Additionally, he participated in and abused the Oil For Food program that was set up by the UN to allow Saddam to sell some oil in exchange for food.  The UN official responsible for administering this program was eventually discovered to have been gaming the system the entire time.  The program was cancelled due to massive fraud.

 

In March of 2003. president George W Bush made the decision to abide by the terms of the ceasefire.  He and others asserted that weapons of mass destruction were there and that might include a nuclear capability.  Saddam had used his gas weapons on the Kurd rebels in the north part of the country, and had sent in death squads.  Over 100,000 Kurds were exterminated.  This showed he had the weapons at one point, but Israeli intelligence indicated that the weapons had been moved to Syria.  

 

www.wnd.com/2013/03/guess-where-syrias-chemical-weapons-originate/

 

  The argument that there were no WMDs in Iraq is false.  The Bush administration's explanation on this topic was abysmal and to this day opponents of Bush rely heavily on this notion that there were no WMDs in Iraq.  There were.  They were moved.  Assad is using and storing them now in Syria.

 

Saddam was given a period of time to rectify the problems or face the consequences.  Saddam chose not to cooperate.  With approval from Congress, including the consent  of Hillary Clinton in the clip above, George W. Bush built a coalition of nations like his father did, but not as large as and not as enthusiastically supported.  Shock and awe befell Iraq once again, and as before, it wasn't long before our forces defeated Saddam.

 

As I stated earlier, the aftermath of the fall of Saddam was a disaster.  The various factions Saddam had controlled through brutality were now out in the open and recruiting.  The terrible incident at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as other atrocious acts of violence by a couple of our soldiers contributed to displeasure with the war.  By the time Barack Obama removed our troops, thousands of Iraqis had been killed.  Billions of dollars had been spent.  The general sentiment about the war was and continues to be largely negative.  Most people do not know the history I outlined briefly above.

 

That details some of the factors and reasons why Barack Obama's method of ending the war in Iraq in fulfilment of one of his key campaign promises was accomplished in such a poor way.  Should the war have ended?  Yes.  Should it have been ended the way Barack Obama did it? No.  The proof of this is to simply pay attention to the news.  Within a week or two you will unfortunately hear about another tragic bombing in Iraq.

 

My next article will focus on Afghanistan.  The longest war in our nation's history.