Iraq War: Opinion

The Iraq War, also known as the Second Gulf War, commenced on the 20th of March, in the year of 2003. It's still going on today. This war is a military engagement encompassing the invasion and occupation of Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition as well as an asymmetrical war between an insurgency and coalition troops as well as the New Iraqi Army. There are some good and bad results from the invasion of Iraq. Controversies and conflicts formed as the war continues. One of the important controversies among the people is whether or not the U.S. should be in Iraq. Should the U.S. be in Iraq in the first place? Should the U.S. continue being in the country of Iraq? Personally, I don't really care, but as I came to research information about the war in Iraq, I became more convinced that the U.S. should not be in Iraq.

First of all, there was not even an official declaration of war, but the U.S. President George W. Bush claims that the war is part of an ongoing conflict called the "War on Terrorism". Despite the efforts made to sway public opinion, the invasion of Iraq is seen as a violation of international law, breaking the UN Charter especially since the U.S. failed to secure U.N. support for an invasion of Iraq. According to the position, adherence by the U.S. and the other great powers to the UN Charter and to other international treaties to which they are legally bound is not a choice but a legal obligation. Exercising military power in violation of the UN Charter demoralizes the rule of law and is illegal vigilantism on an international scale.

Secondly, following the disputed invasion, neither nuclear weapons nor weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq nor could the allegations of links with Al Qaeda be substantiated. All that was found in the investigations after the invasion was a very small number of degraded chemical weapons shells buried and forgotten after the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988. One of the main reasons for invading Iraq was the possibility of weapons of mass destructions, but it turns out that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong" as President Bush admitted. Colin Powell later expressed regret about his presentation to the UN Security Council, when things didn't turn out as planned. I would think that people should be more skeptical about following Bush's ideas because they could be another one of those "mistakes". We can't really afford more mistakes, considering the number of lives that have been taken from the war in Iraq alone. The U.S. claimed