JAKARTA - The United States (US) invasion of Iraq still raises many big questions even though 17 years have passed. The most questionable is what is the real reason the 43rd US President George Walker Bush organized an attack on the Land of a Thousand Nights?
The attacks began when Washington believed Iraq under Saddam Hussein's leadership had weapons of mass destruction. America fears that Iraq's nuclear facilities could trigger a major war. The then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the situation by saying: We don't want smoke weapons to turn into "mushroom clouds (nuclear explosions).
On the other hand, Debs and Monteiro, in a journal entitled Known Unknowns: Power Shifts, Uncertainty, and War (2013) argue that the US accusations are not proven. One of the reasons for this was the involvement of the US government in false propaganda ahead of the Iraq war.
In this article, it is explained that the Iraq-US war actually has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or WMD, let alone the reason for the spread of democratic ideology. On the contrary, in broad outline, the Iraq war was motivated by the US desire to re-establish its position as a major world power.
A quick victory in the heart of the Arab land will send a message to many countries, such as Syria, Libya, Iran or North Korea that US hegemony is still great there. Bush, who turns 74 today, has an important decision behind that.
Prior to the attacks of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld considered that conquering Saddam would increase US credibility and influence in the region. The reason became even stronger on September 11, when the symbols of US military and economic domination were destroyed.
As a result, the Bush administration is increasingly convinced that US hegemony must be strengthened. The only way to send a strong, threatening message is to demonstrate a great victory in war.
However, the US felt the need to target a country that was strong enough. "We need to detonate something else, which proves that we are big and strong and not pressured by this kind of attack," Al Jazeera quoted Rumsfeld as saying.
Iraq was judged according to US target criteria. First, because Iraq is considered to be stronger than Afghanistan. Second, because Iraq is on a neoconservative line.
The discourse on the Baghdad attack has actually been rolling since the previous president's regime, George HW Bush. However, he rejected the plan that started in 1991. The plan could only be implemented after 9/11 broke out.
As quoted by Al Jazeera, a senior official in the Bush administration told us that Iraq is not just about Iraq. Iraq is one of the countries "under attention" besides Iran, Syria and North Korea.
In a memo issued on September 30, 2001, Rumsfeld advised Bush that "the US government should envision goals along the lines of the state of Afghanistan and the two other key states that support terrorism," he said.
US Defense Secretary Bush era, Donald Rumsfeld, as written by Feith in War and Decision (2009) said that action against Iraq will make it easier to face Libya and Syria politically and militarily. Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney once said that behind the war, it showed, "We (the US) are capable and willing to attack someone. It sends a very strong message," he said.
The writer Jonah Goldberg has also discussed the same thing. He analyzed this problem using the theory of the historian Michael Ledeen. Goldberg called it the "Ledeen Doctrine".
The theory suggests that every ten years or so, the US needs to take the "sacrifice" of a few small countries "and throw it against the wall, just to show the world that we (the US) count," Goldberg wrote.
So, even though it has become common knowledge for fact-diggers it can be said that weapons of mass destruction and fighting terrorism are just nonsense that the US built to attack Iraq.
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