An Unnecessary War

This article was originally written in Foreign Policy in 2003, but can be read online here.

September 15, 2009



Written just months preceding the US's declaration of war against Iraq, the following article represented the anti-war realist's international prospective and beliefs concerning this immanent decision. By citing the United State's accommodating relationship with Iraq in the past as contradictory to our present, antagonizing feelings for this nation, the authors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are trying to emphasize that it is partly the US's fault that Saddam Hussein is as aggressive as he is today. Once believers in supplying Iraq weapons to protect them from the, at the time, worser foe, Iran, Republican politicians like Condoleezza Rice are now advocating war with this same nation. I asked several people their opinions on the major points of the article, curious as to how people feel about this silenced perspective, now that the war has been losing support. Most people agreed fully with the articles, citing the point discounting the American fear of Saddam using WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to blackmail the US. This means that major politicians believe that Iraq will threaten to use these WMD on us, even though we have far more of such weapons in our own stockpiles. "That's just not how blackmail works," one person responded. The article even said that it took Saddam 20 years to gain the few WMDs he did have, making it unlikely for him to threaten to give the weapons to the terrorist group, Al Qaeda. What tickled those questioned most was the fact that during the war between Iraq and Iran, the US helped Iraq create chemical weapons like anthrax.

But some also found issue with the article. It focused too much on blaming the US entirely for Iraq's aggression that it neglected to emphasize the source of the aggression, Saddam Hussein, or put any such blame on his actions. Instead, his fallacies were pardoned and the US was cited as an instigator. Finally, even democrats, like Hillary Clinton (who is know adamantly against the war), and a majority of the US population was for going into the war in the first place. This wouldn't be a true Democratic nation if the leaders did not appeal to the majority population's interests.