America’s War in Iraq Essay

War, as it is defined to be is a conflict amid two or more nations, which results in organized violence between each of their military units in order to gain national sovereignty. It is a â€Å"universal phenomena,† whose intensity is defined by those who wage it. War has been seen to exist in the world since prehistoric times, where first it was only small scale raiding, today it is pronounced as an exhibition of military power, whose magnitude is on a constant surplus as the technology grows and is lead by a more modernized warfare. However, I would define war as unimaginable suffering of innocent people who are forced to become its victims, with no fault lying at their own sides. It is the not the politicians and policy makers who have to suffer its magnitude and the phase of its aftermath but rather it’s the soldier, the children, the elderly, the woman who pay off their decisions through the sacrifice of their homes, their families and their lives. The results that it webs to achieve are never obtained, whereas it only brings torture, corrosion of souls of the soldiers, fear to the citizens, destruction of the environment, uncontrollable expense, while it takes the war struck country decades back from its present growth and development. What our leaders forget to explain is that how they would be able establish peace and prosperity upon a graveyard of innocent martyrs and the blood of innocents. Iraq similarly is another such story of violence, sacrifice and blood brutally shed. It was a continuation of the revenge of America after the airplane crashes in New York, marking the 9/11. The actions of someone else’s were paid off by the innocents, who after Afghanistan were targeted as the next victims, the first bombardment starting from Baghdad, on March 20, 2003; and continues till now. A report published by the Washington Post in 2006, estimates that according to the death counts made by American and Iraqi epidemiologists, over 650,000 citizens have died in Iraq in the 3 years period of time. This according to the count defined by George W. Bush in 2005 is about 9 times more, and 10 times more than the count of the British research group. And as to why this war was waged, many reasons could be linked to it. More importantly it was America’s war against terrorism and its search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The US army is believed to have made over 300 inspections by now, but has unfortunately not been able to find any such weapons, and even if there was any existence of such weapons then the army would have used them against the army when they firs attacked, however it was a rather peaceful conquer of the entire country which was claimed by the politicians to be a major threat to their country and the war just a mere act of self defense. As a Canadian site in an article on â€Å"An introduction to the Iraq War† reports Hans Blix, the UN Chief Weapons Inspector to have said that â€Å"It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100 percent certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty of about where they are. †(Green, 2008) And even if the war was about the WMD then why is it still lingering when no proof of the weapons has been found? However if America claims that the war was initially waged in order to eliminate Iraq from its tyrannical ruler Saddam Hussain, who was captured more than 5 years ago, then why is the war still continuing. And even if it was to eliminate the dictatorship from the country, to remove unjust rulers then why is it that civilian areas are the targets of American bombardment, that innocent children are being killed, and the Us army is rather planting American flags in the Iraqi soils. What sort of liberation does their presidency talk about? Book Review An answer to all these queries is found in the book â€Å"Blind into Baghdad: America’s war in Iraq† written by James Fallow. Print and radio journalist, working for the Atlantic Monthly since years, James Fallow is also the author of seven more books. His more pronounced works revolve around military and its policies, making assumptions and then predicting the future of action, if they are to be taken up by the government. Similarly is this book Fallow had previously made predictions of the outcome of the war if it was brought up by America and what were the flaws and where the government lacked behind in this war. It is a compilation of basically five articles which he wrote for his magazine the Atlantic Monthly, which he later assembled in the form of a collected book which even won the National Magazine Award in 2005. Elaborated with an introduction and a foreword, the 5 articles which it contains are: The fifty-first state, blind into Baghdad, Bush’s lost year, Why Iraq has no army, and Will Iran be next? Fallow calls the entire Iraq war a big failure for the US, blaming it onto the policy implementers that is the few leaders handling the orders rather than the administration itself which handled the situation. He states in his book that, â€Å"The U. S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure. † (Fallow, 2006) The book clearly identifies the fact that immediately after the attacks of 9/11, (the very next day), plans were being towards attacking Iraq and abducting Saddam Hussain from his throne, and a year before the war the future of the country was decided with positions and posts within the â€Å"to be occupied country† already given out. However, hat is not known to the media is that the day of the starting and ending of the war were prefixed then already, plus seventeen working groups were formulated who were to take matters such as Oil and Energy, Legal Framework, infrastructure rebuilding of the country in hand with $5 million at their disposal. However, why it all remained to be secretive was because of the ongoing Afghanistan war which kept both the media and the people enough occupied to notice this planning. The war was estimated to cost around $50 to 60 billion which the military refused to later agree to, while a 135 item checklist of postwar duties was circulated among the army under the title â€Å"Mission Matrix. † James also raises the question as o why the government wasn’t able to plan into the future of the occupation, when no WMD were found, hadn’t the regime of Bush thought of what negative effects such an unplanned and reasonless terrorism would have upon the country’s international image and the party’s political position. He further points out the president’s attraction towards the action of bigger actions responsible for â€Å"American prestige, fortune, and lives,† which constantly ignored all the warnings predicted by the officials, how Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz continued to ignore all these warning reports and put everything up on stake with the preceding of the war. The â€Å"Bush’s Lost Year,† talks about the postwar position of the US in Iraq, of how it further declined its status in Afghanistan and its stance over the â€Å"war on terror. † â€Å"Why Iraq has no army,† refutes the very reason of US’s invasion into Iraq which was to get held of the WMD, no matter the army wasn’t able to recover the imagined weapons but also failed its estimation to such a high level that Iraq was so defensively weak that it didn’t even hold an independent army of its own. While lastly in â€Å"Will Iran be next? † he highlights further predictions of Iran being the next potential target. He explains it through the analysis of experts and various interviews taken from soldiers, spies, and diplomats who further explain the effects of an Iranian war and reasons towards it. James Fallow, like many other elite journalists through his writing explicitly shows his opposition towards the Iraq war and openly describes it as US’s stance towards terrorism, â€Å"If [the United States] did not have to attack, then it should not go ahead, not simply because of the complications within Iraq itself but because the way a war would inevitably suck time, money, and attention from every other aspect of a ‘war on terrorism’. † On the other hand, no matter James’s writings show are an insight towards the situation of the US leaders and their incompetence towards the wars proceedings and planning, many journalists such as Michael Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, blame him for being less skeptic towards his work. It is believed that no matter he kept a strong view against the war he did not prove his point through facts and true research but merely based them upon anecdotes and assumptions, which made him a big candidate of the blame game. Conclusion War in Iraq as believed by many intellects could have been easily avoided, through the accepting the surrender of Saddam Hussain, sending search teams for armaments of Mass Destruction, international supervision of elections and even if a matter of oil, by signing a treaty with Iraq, not a drop of blood could have been lost, and even the objectives could have been attained. Thus war is not the only solution to political and economical issues, as at present the consequences can be seen of the war where today political parties are running for election the blame of Iraqi war holds grave consequences for the initial policy makers who so ever are responsible would not to be forgiven by the public in the end. References Fallows, J. (2006). Blind into Baghdad. America’s War in Iraq. New York: Vintage Books.Brown, D. October 11, 2006. Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000. Washington Post. Retrieved on November 2, 2008, from http://www. washingtonpost. com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442. html Green, R. Introduction to the Iraq War Essays. Canadian Mind Products. Retrieved on November 2, 2008 from http://mindprod. com/politics/iraqintroduction. html .