My Opinions about the Iraq War
Sometimes Presidents misuse our military. In my opinion, an example would be President Bush's war on Iraq--I mean the one that began in 2003, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the ongoing military presence in Iraq. Here are some of my reasons.
1. The war's budget is in the 170 billions and rises about 20,000 dollars per second. See Cost of the Iraq War for what our country could have been spending this money on instead of the war in Iraq. For example, we could have fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for about seven years. This would have had guaranteed results and would have raised the United States' respect level around the world. Instead we went into Iraq thinking only of the United States, and that has jeopardized our relationships with many countries. Peace comes from trust and respect, not from violence and anger.
2. We never really had any proof that there were nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. President Bush says that he would not go to war without trying every single possible non-military option first. But in this case he went prematurely into war without proper justification.
3. Hundreds of US soldiers have died in Iraq at the hands of insurgents who don't want a foreign military occupying their country. If that happened in the United States, I would probably feel the same way as the insurgents, though I might not handle it with violence. I feel as though the lives of our soldiers have been wasted on a ghost motive.
4. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by US military action in Iraq. I think this is murder because there is no reason that they should die just because their leader is suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction. Of course, Iraqi insurgents have killed civilians as well. But this would not have happened if the US had never gone into Iraq.
5. President Bush says that this a way to protect the USA. I agree that it would be a way to protect the USA if we had certain evidence of weapons of mass destruction that would be used to attack the USA. In this case, however, there was no such evidence. There are better ways to protect the USA than violence. (See point 1, above.)