Luke Monteiro

December 5, 2015
International Terrorism Term Paper

Introduction
The invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s was a brutal mistake which has caused
more terrorism than it has stopped. The scope of this paper would be to highlight
the initial mistake the US made in invading Iraq, and how it has only caused more
terrorism to grow in the country in spite of eliminating Saddam Hussein. The
method of this paper will look chronologically at how the invasion negatively shaped
the country by laying the groundwork for terrorism to grow in the country.
The First Gulf War
The first thing that is important to analyze when looking at the mistake that
was the invasion of Iraq is to understand the origin of the conflict between the
United States and Saddam Hussein and how the United States has always has the
propensity and desire to invade Iraq. Before there was a reason to even create
conflict with Iraq, the United States had an interesting relationship with the dictator
of the country.1 In fact, a commonly cited favor that the US did for Iraq was
strategically ignore its use of WMDs and its blatant violence of the Anfal genocide
during the Iran-Iraq war.2 Because the United States had not dealt with a substantial
threat since the Soviet Unions collapse, the military had been constantly looking at
simulations positing the possibility that Iraq would be an enemy of the United
States.3 The United States even planned out strategies for invading Iraq as early as
1988 to create a preventative measure for protecting US oil interests in the region
as well as stability within the Middle East. However, it would be Iraq how would give
the United States the pretext to fight when Saddam invaded Kuwait and planned to
invade Saudi Arabia to subsume its extensive oil reserves which primarily supported
the United States.4 Kuwaits violation of OPEC rules of supplying crude oil had
caused the value of the price of oil to decrease substantially to the point where the
Iraqi oil industry was running at a loss due to the inability to sell at a higher price or
risk being pushed out of the global market and the extreme costs stemming from
the war with Iran had pushed Iraq into a corner where war became the only option. 5
This specific incident indicates a very old desire the United States has had in
wanting to stir up conflict with Iraq because of the United States role in supporting
Kuwaits very aggressive oil policies in order to provoke Iraqs invasion of Kuwait. 6
However, George Bush Senior, the president at the time, decided to call off the
finishing blow which would put out the threat of Saddam Hussein forever, against
the desires of some of his administration such as General Schwarzkopf who was in
charge of the US forces during the Persian Gulf War. 7
The decision not to finish off Saddam Hussein would cause a decade of
constant reasoning by the United States to try and invade Iraq again, but Iraq
simply didnt do anything to warrant another invasion. One method that was
attempted was trying to associate terrorist attacks that negatively affected the
United States in some way to Iraq. For example, many people tried to associate the
Oklahoma City Bombing with Iraq by making assumptions that somehow John Doe 2
was from Iraq even though most evidence would indicate that John Doe 2 wasnt
even Muslim.8 This is not to say that there was no influence by Al Qaeda on the
bombing at all, but even the evidence that Ramzi Yousef helped Terry Nichols while
they were both in the Philippines makes the assumption that Ramzi Yousef was from
Iraq and was acting on orders from Saddam Hussein, even though he is from Kuwait
and worked with his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who is also from Kuwait with
familial ties to Pakistan.9 These incorrect assumptions created a lot of rhetoric

positing the possibility that Saddam Hussein himself was trying to wage war on the
United States by joining together with terrorists. 10
Three separate impacts would come out of the American trend to demonize
Iraq and create the false association that Saddam Hussein was connected with
international terrorism. The first is that it would create a self-fulfilling prophecy were
invading Iraq would become inevitable in a world where 81% of Americans believed
that there were ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda. 11 The second impact is that it
would paper over the failures made by the FBI and CIA in discovering and
preventing cases of terrorism prior to 9/11 because the focus was on making
linkages to Iraq, which would inevitably cause a gap in knowledge necessary to
prevent 9/11.12 In other words, the inability to prevent attacks like the first World
Trade Center bombings and the embassy attacks would continue into the new
millennium with 9/11 as American intelligence organizations were clearly spread too
thin to deal with threats. The final impact is that the rhetoric produced at this time
would contribute to the monolithic understanding of Islam set forth by Sam
Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations, because it would create a paradigm of the West
versus Islam where similarity in religion somehow mandates a sameness in opinion,
desire, and political goals.13 This not only mandates constant ideological conflict with
Islam through the narcissism of minor differences, but create a self-fulfilling
prophecy were the only way to solve problems regarding the Middle East and
terrorists would be to go to war and to create conflict. 14
9/11 and the Invasion of Iraq
As was noted in the section above, a significant portion of Americans were
already under the assumption that Saddam Hussein had linkages with Al Qaeda.
However, the September 11th attacks changed everything. The assumption that
those linkages existed became more and more prominent because of the notion
that there was a small Al Qaeda camp in Northern Iraq which was technically apart
of the Kurdish territory that many officials cited as the primary linkage, which
became known as the Doug Feith Memo.15 However, this linkage was incredibly
untrue for two reasons. The first was that the leader of that al Qaeda cell was very
afraid of Saddam Hussein and would later flee the country to Sweden to ensure he
wasnt eliminated by Saddam. The second reason was that al Qaeda, and Osama
bin Laden more specifically, did not want to be beholden to Saddam Hussein on any
level. 16
However, the Bush administration seemed adamant in invading Iraq. It is
important that we look at the explanations that were produced by the
administration as to why invasion could be justified and why those justifications
were wrong. The first explanation for the war in Iraq was the notion that it was to
fight the war on terror to protect American citizens by preventing a countrys use of
weapons of mass destruction. This was exacerbated by the events of 9/11, when
the president felt that he needed to rally the flag and set a powerful signal that
America would not take the attack quietly by invading Iraq. In fact the sheer amount
of rhetoric from Congress exemplified an incorrect correlation between the invasion
of Iraq and the war on terror as a corrective measure to justify the fact that the war
was good. What was amazing that both Republicans like Dick Cheney and
Democrats like Joe Lieberman correlated the two concepts during speeches. 17
However, the notion that the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq were correlated
was wrong. This became blatantly evident when Diane Sawyer interviewed George
Bush shortly after the initial decision to invade, and he said that there was good

intelligence indicating that Hussein had WMDs. 18 However, the good intelligence
he was referring to was incredibly old as it pertained Iraqs use of WMDs in the
1980s and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the 1980s. In fact, intelligence from when
we actually checked the country showed that there were no WMDs at all and that
there was no reason that Iraq even needed or wanted to use them. 19
The other major explanation for the justification for the war in Iraq was that it
was a humanitarian intervention. However, this proposal was something that came
much later than the war on terror and WMD explanation because it came at a point
when public perception of the war was reaching a very low point. 20 However, the
militarized humanitarianism argument was a wrong justification. The first reason
this is not the case is because humanitarian cases usually happen on the basis of
necessity. In particular, at this time, there was a substantially larger necessity to
intervene in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which was facing an infinitely
worse humanitarian crisis than Iraq considering Saddams repression had slowed
since the Iran-Iraq war.21 The second reason this justification didnt make sense was
because the way the United States approached Iraq didnt make sense after we
blatantly ignored their use of WMDs in the 1980s and their committing of the Anfal
genocide, simply because it served our interests. It was completely hypocritical that
we only addressed the issue because it fell in line with what we wanted to
happen.22The third reason why this explanation isnt true is because the war was not
authorized by the Iraqi government or at least the UN Security Council to ensure
there was a reasonable cause for invading and that it could best serve the people in
Iraq.23
The two main explanations for justifying the war in Iraq appear to be wrong,
which means we should look at the possible rationales in which the United States
could benefit from a war. The possible rationales that would help the national
interest were: to clean up the mess from the 1 st war with Iraq in the 1980s,
improving the position of Israel, to create an Arab democracy, permit withdrawal of
forces from Saudi Arabia because of the anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia,
and to find an oil ally outside of Saudi Arabia should the House of Saud fall. 24 In
terms of personal interest, the argument is that a war in Iraq could serve business
interests. Specifically, it would support Halliburtons bid to clean up the oil fires
caused by the initial invasion, producing cells for detainees in Gitmo, logistics for
the Army and Navy, and generating fuel transport for soldiers and vehicles. 25It
would also support the profit maximizing by the company Bechtel which was given a
no contract bid to help rebuild the country. 26
Unfortunately, these justifications for invading Iraq would only produce a
myriad of problems proving that the invasion of Iraq would actually cause more
terrorism than it would stop. To begin, it is evident that because there was no link
between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, there was no terrorism to begin with in the
country, which means any increase in terrorism proves a negative impact for the
invasion of Iraq. The first reason why terrorism would increase in the country is that
by attacking an oil rich Middle Eastern country with no real reason for doing so
feeds into the Al Qaeda propaganda machine portraying America as a dangerous
overbearing power that tramples over the rest of the world. 27 In particular it feeds
into the very reasonable articulation made by Osama bin Laden that the anger
doesnt stem from nowhere, but erupts from a hatred of the institutions of power
that America has which tend to support an overbearing Israel and create a
dangerous distinction between Islam and the West. 28

The second reason the invasion of Iraq caused more terrorism in the country
was by tearing open the country, such that it allowed Al Qaeda to pour into the
country. This is incredibly problematic because by invading the country and later
eliminating Saddam Hussein, the United States created a power gap in which actual
terrorism could fill into the country. 29This fill in becomes even more problematic as
typically occupation strategies arent the most cogent solution to stopping global
terrorism. In the particular case of Iraq, many Shiites in the country threatened to
vote in an anti-American radical Islamic regime which would cause infinitely more
problems since it creates another anti-Us regime, but this one has the capacity for
state-sponsored terrorism.30
The third reason why the invasion of Iraq would create more terrorism in the
country would be the mistake of invading the country when Saddams son, Qasay,
managed to steal nearly a billion dollars in cash form the countrys Central Bank,
which posed a major problem because it created the possibility where he could
either come back to power with the money, or use the money for more nefarious
means in which he could create his own terrorist cell to exact revenge on the United
States.31
The fourth reason why the invasion of Iraq created more terrorism was
because of how it affected relations at home. In particular, the violation of civil
liberties through the Patriot Act and the Battle with librarians over whether the
government should look at library records was some of the divisive issues that
caused Americans to pull their trust away from the government. 32These issues
combined with the failing state of the war created a huge gap in trust which is very
necessary in fighting against terrorism because without trust in our national security
institutions, there is a tendency for Americans to then fight against those
institutions as well as not cooperating with those organization in order to ensure
that attacks dont occur at home.33
The fifth reason why the invasion in Iraq created more terrorism was that it
pushed terrorists to the fringes. In other words, it allowed them to search for new
ways to expand. One primary example of this is how the invasion of Iraq led to a lot
of terrorists to move into Southeast Asia in order to find sanctuary in case the
United States invasion went longer than intended. In this case, the invasion did take
a substantial amount of time, which means that the likelihood of a diasporic
reaction from terrorists was likely.34
The sixth reason why the invasion in Iraq created more terrorism was that it
severely undercut relations with certain countries, while absolutely decimating US
credibility abroad. The first instance of this was our determination of calling the
invasion a humanitarian mission. Not only have I already proven that this
justification is factually incorrect, but many argue that its justification gives
humanitarianism a bad name.35The problem with calling it humanitarianism when it
wasnt means countries are substantially less likely to want humanitarian aid from
any country, let alone the United States, because the assumption is that it will look
like what happened in Iraq. This is problematic because places like Yemen and
Pakistan which sorely need humanitarian aid, which can substantially decrease its
terrorism problems, wont want to accept it from the United States. The second
instance of US credibility loss is the simple fact that the United States violated the
Geneva Convention, human rights laws, and normative standards in the
international world at large because the war in Iraq produced horrible images of
death and destruction like the bombing of Baghdad, the torture of prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay, and the blatant violation of basic human rights at Abu

Ghraib.36This examples became extremely problematic for two reasons. The first
was that we created a norm that violence and torture were justified if the ends
justified the means. In other words, if we are not held to standards of basic human
rights, should the Israelis be held to any ethical standard in their treatment of
Palestinians, or Chinese towards Tibetan monks, or Russians toward Ukraine? We
create a standard that other countries can easily use to justify how they commit
violence because we did it first. The other problem is that it creates the added
problem of more radicalized terrorism. This means that the violent acts committed
by the United States provokes a reciprocal response form terrorists who are more
likely to commit violent acts to match what the United States has done to their
friends and brothers.37 The third instance of credibility loss is that we lose direct
relationship with certain countries. In particular, the way we dealt with Iraq sends a
message to other countries in the region like Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi
Arabia.38The reason why we need to have better relations with these countries is
because of their propensity to produce terrorism. In particular, bin Laden is
someone who originated from Saudi Arabia, so it might be cogent to deal with
terrorism in a country where one of the most profound terrorists comes from. The
invasion of Iraq created an incredibly negative relationship between us all because
the invasion seemed to be a West vs Islam war which isolated those countries
pushing them into a precarious position regarding terrorism in their homelands. 39
The seventh and final reason why the invasion of Iraq increased terrorism is
because of how it affected the military as a whole. In particular, the invasion
significantly weakened morale for soldiers causing a decrease in the enlistment for
the army, leading to a weakened US force fighting against terrorism which creates
an inability for the United States to deal with terrorist threats. 40Even more than the
demoralization of troops and enlistment is the problem of overstretch, where the
invasion of Iraq spread our troops to thin around the world. The one major problem
that is associated with this is that it makes it much more difficult to deal with a
terrorist threat at home. This is because many people that would be soldiers and
would go out to fight in wars like Iraq could be at home preparing for domestic
preparedness because of the dangerous threat it poses. 41
Ultimately, it is evident that there are multiple reasons for why the invasion
of Iraq would have caused more terrorism in the short run. Several examples listed
above prove the real and potential terror threats that stemmed from the invasion.
However, it is clear that the justifications for the invasion were clearly based in
private business interests and interests of the national level, which begs the
question if the invasion could have been avoided. The answer would seem to be no
because not only were the private interests incredibly powerful, but the rationale
that original mess in Iraq should be cleaned up was most likely bolstered by Collin
Powell, Dick Cheney, and General Schwarzkopf who all probably wanted to see the
end of the Saddam regime made the war inevitable. 42
The Invasions Impact on Today
The final impact that the invasion of Iraq had is undoubtedly the problem in
which it created massive amounts of instability which allowed for the creation and
growth of ISIS today. In particular, the invasions problematic side effect to create
extreme radicalization within the country as a form of blowback against the initial
invasion, as well as the tearing up of the country so that other terrorists could pour
in left a long lasting impact of terrorism in the country after the US withdrew its
troops from the country.43One of the long-lasting impacts from the invasion and the

taking down of Saddam Hussein was the sectarian violence that ensued because of
the Iraqi leaders inability to cope in the US controlled country. In particular, the
extreme violence in the country coupled with the power vacuum left by Saddams
death and the pouring in of terrorists from Al Qaeda set up the perfect breeding
ground for ISIS.44Although America might want to claim that ISISs rise was
inevitable because of the Syrian civil war, it was clearly evident that the
destabilization of Iraq is what allowed ISIS to start in the first place as a branch of Al
Qaeda, when the Syrian conflict only acted as the catalyst for their renewal after the
2007 surge pushed the majority of the terrorists into a precarious position. 45It would
seem that today, ISIS poses the greatest terrorist threat among the remaining
terrorist groups in terms of its ability act globally. Its massive acquisitions of land
and wealth in the last few years has put it in a position where it can do the most
damage, especially to our allies in the region like Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Ultimately, the example of ISIS should at least be reminder to never again justify
such an unimaginably unnecessary war. ISIS has become the long-term culmination
of the US excursion into Iraq in 2003, and it doesnt look to go away any time soon.
Conclusion

Endnotes:
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