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United States ' Involvement For Terrorism And Spreading Democracy

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In 2003 the USA attacked Iraq. Washington’s official account of the reasons to invade Iraq was centred on the argument that Iraq is a threat to its neighbours as well as to the USA. This was due to Iraq supposedly having WMDs and seeking for nuclear weapons and Saddam being unpredictable and irrational actor. Furthermore, it was argued that Saddam supports terrorists and could give WMDs to them. It was USA’s mission to bring democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people (Hudson, 2005: 298-299). Some scholars support the official account as the real reason for the invasion, but there are many critical scholars. Some of them advance the theory that behind the attack was the urge to protect Israel or the effect that pro-Israeli voices have in …show more content…

In the same speech he promised the continuation of war on terror (Bush, 2002). It was stressed by Condoleezza Rice, who was the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, that Iraq was unwilling to cooperate with the UN inspectors and that Iraq was lying about its assumed WMDs (Rice, 2002). Bush, Rice and other members of the administration made clear that Iraq was dangerous because of its WMDs and therefore Iraq should be invaded. It was also stated in the Joint Resolution that authorised the war that Iraq had WMDs, seeked nuclear weapons and was a threat to the USA (H.R.J. Res. 114, 2002).

However, if WMDs and noncooperation with UN inspectors made Iraq such a huge threat, it has to be asked why Egypt and Israel, for example, were not attacked. For example, Israel has not ratified the Nonproliferation Treaty or the 1972 biological and toxic weapons convention and Egypt has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (Hubbel, 1998). Moreover, in general, it is not only Saddam Hussein who has murdered thousands and defied UN resolutions. The USA, however, is not seriously planning to attack those other states (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2003).

David Dunn argues that this is, when it comes to North Korea, because the administration believes that North Korea is militarily strong enough to deter the USA, but Iraq is not and Iraq has to be stopped before it is, too. (Dunn, 2003: 286) Even if this was true for all the states in the

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