Iraq: “The Global Pool of Terrorists”

The Iraq War, also known as the Occupation of Iraq, The Second Gulf War Operation Iraqi Freedom, or Operation New Dawn is an ongoing military campaign which began on March 20, 2003, with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force led by troops from the United States and the United Kingdom.

Prior to the war, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom claimed that Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed a threat to their security and that of their coalition/regional allies. In 2002, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1441 which called for Iraq to completely cooperate with UN weapon inspectors to verify that Iraq was not in possession of WMD and cruise missiles. The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) found no evidence of WMD, but could not verify the accuracy of Iraq's weapon declarations. Lead weapons inspector Hans Blix advised the UN Security Council that while Iraq was cooperating in terms of access, Iraq's declarations with regards to WMD still could not be verified.

"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on."Jihadist terrorists, the administration’s argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world. The president’s argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.

Real evidence was provided by the statistical data on the number of victims and people whose life was ruined because of the war. The US has suffered more than 72,000 battlefield casualties since the start of the war on terror in 2001, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. The query by the campaigning Veterans for Common Sense organisation shows that 4372 American soldiers have died and another 67,671 have been wounded in action, injured in accidents or succumbed to illness in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since the US war against terrorism was initially meant to be continuous the US authorities have been keeping placing some troops on the territory of the first American enemy – Iraq. In support of this assumption in a January 10, 2007 televised address to the US public, Bush proposed 21,500 more troops for Iraq, a job program for Iraqis, more reconstruction proposals, and $1.2 billion for these programs. On January 23, 2007 in the 2007 State of the Union Address, Bush announced "deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq."

On May 10, 2007, 144 Iraqi Parliamentary lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal. On August 14, 2007 the deadliest single attack of the whole war occurred. Nearly 800 civilians were killed by a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks on the northern Iraqi settlement of Qahtaniya. More than 100 homes and shops were destroyed in the blasts. US officials blamed al-Qaeda. Still speaking before the U.S. Congress on April 8, 2008, General David Petraeus urged delaying troop withdrawals, saying, "I’ve repeatedly noted that we haven’t turned any corners, we haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.”

In spite the very instable and tense situation on January 31, 2009, Iraq held provincial elections. Provincial candidates and those close to them faced some political assassinations and attempted assassinations, and there was also some other violence related to the election. Iraqi voter turnout failed to meet the original expectations which were set and was the lowest on record in Iraq, but U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker characterized the turnout as "large". Of those who turned out to vote, some groups complained of disenfranchisement and fraud. After the post-election curfew was lifted, some groups made threats about what would happen if they were unhappy with the results.

With the new elections in America itself and its unexpected results the situation may change. On February 27, 2009, United States President Barack Obama gave a speech at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in the U.S. state of North Carolina announcing that the U.S. combat mission in Iraq would end by August 31, 2010.

Critics argue on the reasons of this war but today almost no one has doubts about the main objective of the Bush Administration – the US expansion of its economic and military dominance of the world. The common arguments against a war against Iraq include the following facts: the death and casualties it will cause among Iraqi civilians who are not complicit in the Saddam regime. Unilateral aggressive warfare is a hazard to international law and to peace among nations in the large. Militarization can be harmful to domestic society, particularly in a time of economic downturn. The importation of more warfare into the Middle East region may lead to its further destabilization, as well as to the continuation of present causes of violence and terrorism. The increasing willingness of the American government to use violence abroad threatens the establishment of a state of perpetual warfare.

The administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: implications for the United States," circulated within the government in April 2006 and partially declassified in October, states that "the Iraq War has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists...and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives." Yet administration officials have continued to suggest that there is no evidence any greater jihadist threat exists as a result of the Iraq War. "Are more terrorists being created in the world?" then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rhetorically asked during a press conference in September. "We don’t know. The world doesn’t know. There are not good metrics to determine how many people are being trained in a radical madrasa school in some country."In January 2007 Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in congressional testimony stated that he was "not certain" that the Iraq War had been a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and played down the likely impact of the war on jihadists worldwide: "I wouldn’t say there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq. I really wouldn’t."

Thus even among those who have launched this war there is no common ground on what concerns the problem of reality of the threat posed by Iraq and its role in waging the “war against the infidels”. A logical question comes to mind: how can people declare war if they are not sure who the real enemy is?