Operation Iraqi Freedom

In March of 2002, we went to war with Iraq, overthrew its dictator, found no Weapons of Mass Destruction, and destabilized the whole region. The average American doesn't have the mental capacity to look at our intervention in the region and see how it led to a social and economic atmosphere that would eventually give birth to extremism. We need to understand that the United States, by invading Iraq, set forth events that eventually created ISIS. Many Americans have not made that connection and, if they have, they have not been vocal about it. Well, it's time for me to be vocal now. 

After invading Iraq, we captured and executed its dictator Saddam Hussein and set up a democracy. It didn't take long until that democracy started to fall apart. If you study history and look at that region, Iraq would never have been its own country had it not been for the British and French. After World War I they took three totally different people groups, the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shiites, all of whom hate each other, and made them into a country they called Iraq. With the ethnic and religious diversity from those three it would be impossible for a democracy to function; and, thus, it has not function. 

Saddam Hussein was a monster, he was a murderer, and a dictator. He was a horrible person that most likely deserved to be brought to justice. In fact, there are many world leaders that have the blood of innocents on their hands who also should be brought to justice, but we don't because it's not in America's best interest to do so. With Iraq being a country invented by Europeans after WWI, one of the only ways for her to have a functioning government is to have the caliber of monster that was Saddam Hussein. Only a dictator could keep those three people groups in check (I personally feel like Iraq should be broken into 3 countries as to not require a dictator). Removing Saddam from the equation has caused more deaths and more damage to the region in the last 10 years of him not being in power than did the previous 24 years of him being in power. 

In the coming days and weeks, I hope to build a case against the war in Iraq to help us better understand the situation in which we currently find ourselves. If you have tracked what has happened and seek to be unbiased, you can see that we are not simply the respondents to the problem of ISIS, but we were ultimately the unwitting creator of ISIS. This is something we need to admit and own up to. When we have politicians wanting to go to war against Iran and wanting to have boots on the ground in Syria with a large scale re-invasion of that region, we need to be reminded of what we have done; we need to learn from our mistakes so that we don't repeat it. We have raped the Middle East and it has given birth to a demon.