U.S. War on Terrorism the Term Paper

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Even governments who supported the use of force, most notably Britain, did not support the regime change."

Motivating U.S. position, author Robert J. Lieber justifies the preemptive and preventive use of force by the American policymakers: "militant Islamic terrorism plus weapons of mass destruction pose a threat and require us to alter the way we think about the preemptive and even preventive use of force." Supporting the human rights argument presented by the U.S. officials as the primary cause for invading Iraq in March 2003, the author affirms that "despite the subsequent bloodshed, chaos and insurgency, resort to force against Saddam Hussein was a lesser evil because of the dangerous long-term strategic threat he posed to the region and to U.S. national interests" (Lieber, introduction).

Therefore, it can be argued that invoking humanitarian reasons for invading Iraq was in fact, a pretext for deeper, more profound regime and political change in the region.

O. Russbach argued in his "ONU contre ONU," when discussing specific aspects of humanitarian intervention that the crime committed by Saddam Hussein in 1990 when invading Kuwait was qualified and dealt with by all states because it served influent interests. Yet, war crimes committed by the same regime during the '80 against the Kurd population, even though they were strongly condemned, did not receive an appropriate response, because states had no intention of acting against the regime, mostly because of the situation generated by the Cold War. He goes on saying that national interests stopped the international community to act against the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein. If such opinions did exist in connection to other situations when the right to humanitarian intervention would have been legally exercised, it could be fair to assume that human rights violation could be used to support an otherwise illegitimate intervention. Even so, this is considered mere speculation; verifiable facts are the number of deaths among the Iraqi people and the state of chaos and disorder facing the new-built society. The U.S. reaction is rather detached; Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that since Sept. 11, 2001, "we have been a nation at war," and Iraq is a conflict zone, where people may die. Such a pragmatic argument may be suited for dodging uncomfortable questions in the Press Rooms, but, on the international arena, it alienates war time partners like Spain and Poland, who, yielding to national pressure, withdrew their troops.

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Another issue that deepened the cleavage between U.S. And EU stands on the Iraq war was the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. Apparently, what happened in the Iraqi jail was, according to officials, an exception rather than the rule. Even so, this shows to prove that there is a lack of human respect among the American soldiers for both Iraqis and Muslim people, as they are most often associated with terrorists. The scandal of Abu Ghraib triggered a series of inquires into the interrogation practices of U.S. military, which revealed the appalling torture techniques used in the compound areas of Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan. As Tony Karon mentioned "The negative impact of the Abu Ghraib scandal on the ability of the U.S. To achieve its objectives appears to be felt more widely than in Iraq. The State Department's Intelligence and Research Department is reportedly warning that the fallout from the revelations has been devastating, not only in the Arab and Muslim world, but globally, even among some allies in the Coalition. In this wider setting, what is at stake is the benefit of the doubt granted by allies to the U.S. In the waging wars where legal gray areas abound -- from the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo to the very invasion of Iraq in the first place. Coalition allies have suppressed their own disquiet when the U.S. has drifted outside of the framework of international law in pursuit of its war on terror, on the assumption that the U.S. can be trusted do the right thing."

Maybe the most important reason why the U.S. is loosing its partners lies in the geopolitical and geo-strategic analysis and configuration of the world. On March 31, 2005, the presidential panel on 'weapons of mass destruction' (WMD) published the 600-page long overwrought report in which it pointed out a colossal failure by the U.S. intelligence, which.....

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