Iraq War (1 gen 2003 anni – 1 gen 2011 anni)

Descrizione:

Abu Ghraib Prison:A prison outside Baghdag, Iraq, where American military personnel were photographed abusing and torturing prisoners during the Iraq war.


On the international front, on the heels of the invasion of Afghanistan, Bush used the fight against terror as the basis of a new policy of preventive war. Under international law, only an imminent threat justified a nation’s right to strike first. But under what became known as the Bush doctrine, the United States claimed for itself the right to act in “anticipatory self-defense” — that is, not in response to an act of aggression but in anticipation of one. In 2002, President Bush singled out Iran, North Korea, and Iraq — “an axis of evil” — as the states most likely to trigger application of this new doctrine. Bush administration officials identified Iraq in particular as an opportunity to fulfill what they believed to be America’s mission to democratize the world. Iraqis, they contended, would abandon the tyrant Saddam Hussein and embrace representative government if given the chance. According to advocates of “regime change,” a wave of democratization would spread from Iraq across the Middle East, toppling or reforming other unpopular Arab regimes and stabilizing the region — as well as securing vital oil supplies for the West. From a strategic vantage, democratization and strategic interests went hand in hand, because those planning an invasion of Iraq believed that new regimes would be allies of the United States

The United States has long played an active role in the Middle East, driven by the strategic importance of that region and, most important, by America’s need to ensure a reliable supply of oil from the Persian Gulf states. This map shows the highlights of that troubled involvement, from the Tehran embassy hostage taking in 1979 to the invasion and occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama withdrew most combat troops from Iraq in 2011 and from Afghanistan in 2014, but U.S. involvement in the region, in the form of drone strikes, material assistance to various states and factions, and other forms of diplomatic and military assistance continues.

Neither professed democratic ideals nor oil supplies, either singly or together, met Bush’s declared threshold for preventive war. So the president reluctantly acceded to the demands of anxious European allies that the United States go to the UN Security Council, which issued an ultimatum to Hussein: allow the return of the UN weapons inspectors expelled in 1998. The dictator surprisingly agreed. Still eager to invade, the Bush administration insisted that Hussein’s regime constituted a “grave and gathering danger” and ignored further UN deliberations. American forces invaded in March 2003, despite widespread international criticism. Among major allies, only Great Britain joined the U.S. military action, and relations with France and Germany soured — French newspapers dubbed the invasion “Bush’s War.” Even neighboring Mexico and Canada condemned the invasion, and key regional ally Turkey refused transit permission, ruining the army’s plan for a northern thrust into Iraq. The Arab world, rather than embrace democratic regime change, exploded in anti-American demonstrations.

Within three weeks, American troops had taken Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. Iraq’s government collapsed, but despite meticulous military planning the Pentagon had made no provision for what would follow the war. The fighting shattered the infrastructure of Iraq’s cities, leaving them without reliable supplies of electricity and water. In the midst of this turmoil, an insurgency began, sparked by Sunni Muslims, a minority who had nevertheless dominated the country under Hussein’s Baathist regime. Iraq’s Shiite majority, long oppressed by Hussein, initially welcomed the Americans, but extremist Shiite elements soon turned hostile as well. With Iraq’s borders unguarded, Al Qaeda supporters flocked in from all over the Middle East, eager to do battle with the infidel Americans.

Dominant nations often underestimate the strength of religious and national identities in other people. Although it was hard for Bush administration officials to fathom, even the Iraqis who had suffered under Hussein viewed the U.S. forces as invaders. Serious misconduct by the American military contributed to the fierce insurgency. In 2004, graphic images of U.S. military guards abusing and torturing prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world. For many Muslims, the pictures offered final proof of American treachery. At that point, the United States had spent upward of $100 billion on the invasion of Iraq. More than 1,000 American soldiers had died, and 10,000 others had been wounded, many maimed for life. But Bush and others declared that the United States would “stay the course” — for fear that a withdrawal would push Iraq further into chaos.


This image of one of the milder forms of torture experienced by inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison was obtained by the Associated Press in 2003. It shows a detainee bent over with his hands through the bars of a cell while being watched by a comfortably seated soldier. This photograph and others showing far worse treatment administered by sometimes jeering military personnel outraged many in the United States and abroad, particularly in the Muslim world.

As a reelection year approached, Karl Rove, Bush’s top advisor, calculated that stirring the culture wars and appealing to patriotism would mobilize conservatives to vote for Bush. Rove encouraged activists to place antigay initiatives on the ballot in key states to draw conservative voters to the polls; in all, eleven states that year would pass ballot initiatives that wrote bans on gay marriage into state constitutions. The Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, was a decorated Vietnam veteran — in contrast to the president, who had spent the Vietnam years in the Texas Air National Guard. But when Kerry returned from service, he had joined the antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War and in 1971 had delivered a blistering critique of the war to the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the logic of the culture wars, antiwar views made him vulnerable to charges of being weak and unpatriotic. Nearly 60 percent of eligible voters — the highest percentage since 1968 — went to the polls. Bush won a second term, tallying 286 electoral votes to Kerry’s 252. In exit polls, Bush voters cited moral “values” and national security as top concerns, saying that the incumbent made them feel “safer.”

Even as Obama pursued an ambitious domestic agenda, he faced two inherited wars in the Middle East. Determined to end the occupation of Iraq, the president began to draw down troops in 2010, with the last convoy of U.S. soldiers departing in late 2011 after a costly nine-year war. That same year, in May, U.S. Special Forces located and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, where he had been hiding for many years, an action which won Obama nearly universal praise. His use of drone strikes to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders and other U.S. enemies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere proved more controversial — with some human rights advocates charging the president with violating international law. Despite a campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan, the president deployed an additional 30,000 American troops there in 2009 to stem a reinvigorated Taliban. The surge temporarily stabilized the country, but long-term political and military stability proved elusive. Obama left office in 2017 with thousands of U.S. troops still in Afghanistan.

EXAM TIP
Compare the successes and failures of the Obama administration to the administration of Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, a host of events in the Middle East deepened the region’s volatility. In late 2010, a multinational political movement across the Middle East and North Africa roiled the politics of the Arab world. In a wave of popular demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen, autocratic regimes fell, while protests in other countries led to harsh crackdowns. Obama and the U.S. State Department cautiously supported the so-called Arab Spring uprisings but were unable to significantly shape events thereafter. In Syria, for instance, an Arab Spring insurgency matured into a brutal civil war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, nearly five million refugees, and the internal displacement of nearly six million Syrian citizens. The Islamic State, an ultraviolent, fundamentalist Sunni group that emerged in the chaos of war-torn Iraq, also plagued Syria. Starting in 2011, the extremists effectively seized control of portions of northern Iraq and northern Syria, establishing a harsh theocratic “caliphate.” Between 2001, when the war against the Taliban began in Afghanistan, and 2016, when the Syrian refugee crisis and the rise of the Islamic State dominated headlines, the United States learned again that making war was far easier than controlling the events that followed.

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