War Against Iraq Analysis
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13 Pages
After the events that occurred in the United States in September of 2001, its government started to mobilize in order to fight terrorism and be able to give its citizens the security they expected. In order to do so, Bush’s administration, after a series of negotiations with Iraq and the UN, decided to invade the Middle East country in an effort to end terrorism and make the world, and mostly America, a safe place. However, it has been broadly discussed whether this war was in the best interest of the United States and the Americans, or did only benefit a few elite groups while not being able to solve the issues it claimed it was going to, particularly in Iraq. Also, the war against Iraq is discussed to have been started or not as a “just war”,
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In addition, this conflict can also be analyzed from a wide variety of approaches in order to understand what’s going on with different perspectives. The actors participating in the invasion of Iraq can be classified by using the levels of analysis, that “deals with the international system” and is “made up of nation-states but also non-state actors, each of which has a distinct political structure of some type, a culture and social organization that help define its values, and individuals who influence the decisions that are made and are, in turn, affected by those decisions” (Kaufman, p. 34). From those various levels of analysis, the ones that are going to be used are the culture/society, in order to explain the public opinion of the Americans at that time, the individual level, to understand the actions of powerful politicians like George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, but mostly the nation-state level, as it analyzes the United States and Iraq as a whole. This focus on the nation-state is highly related to the fact that the conflict will be analyzed with a realist approach. This approach, in a few words, says that nation-states “act as they do in order to maximize their power so that they can better achieve their own goals” (Kaufman, p. 44). Realism fits appropriately with the way …show more content…
As it has been explained, the start of the war highly supported by the public opinion, since approximately 72 % of Americans believed that it was the best decision. However, this was only possible because “the combined forces of elite ideology (rhetoric) and news media coverage (framing) set the public agenda, shape public opinion, construct social problems, and create folk devils” (Bonn, p. 149). The media and the government played a key role in creating the idea that Iraq, and mostly Saddam Hussein, was an evil nation with the power to create chaos, and military intervention was the best solution, no matter what the UN or the other countries thought about that. Bush’s administration also claimed that fighting Iraq and making them become a democracy would set an example and help end terrorism, following the interests of the nation. Nevertheless, terrorism and bringing peace and prosperity into the Middle East was not really the intention of the American president, since it “was more about the United States than about Iraq” in fact, “the invasion was a conscious expression of America’s unchecked global military hegemony that was designed to perpetuate that hegemony by intimidating those who would challenge it” (Record, p. 24). In this quote it is possible to appreciate that, when the
In addition, this conflict can also be analyzed from a wide variety of approaches in order to understand what’s going on with different perspectives. The actors participating in the invasion of Iraq can be classified by using the levels of analysis, that “deals with the international system” and is “made up of nation-states but also non-state actors, each of which has a distinct political structure of some type, a culture and social organization that help define its values, and individuals who influence the decisions that are made and are, in turn, affected by those decisions” (Kaufman, p. 34). From those various levels of analysis, the ones that are going to be used are the culture/society, in order to explain the public opinion of the Americans at that time, the individual level, to understand the actions of powerful politicians like George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, but mostly the nation-state level, as it analyzes the United States and Iraq as a whole. This focus on the nation-state is highly related to the fact that the conflict will be analyzed with a realist approach. This approach, in a few words, says that nation-states “act as they do in order to maximize their power so that they can better achieve their own goals” (Kaufman, p. 44). Realism fits appropriately with the way …show more content…
As it has been explained, the start of the war highly supported by the public opinion, since approximately 72 % of Americans believed that it was the best decision. However, this was only possible because “the combined forces of elite ideology (rhetoric) and news media coverage (framing) set the public agenda, shape public opinion, construct social problems, and create folk devils” (Bonn, p. 149). The media and the government played a key role in creating the idea that Iraq, and mostly Saddam Hussein, was an evil nation with the power to create chaos, and military intervention was the best solution, no matter what the UN or the other countries thought about that. Bush’s administration also claimed that fighting Iraq and making them become a democracy would set an example and help end terrorism, following the interests of the nation. Nevertheless, terrorism and bringing peace and prosperity into the Middle East was not really the intention of the American president, since it “was more about the United States than about Iraq” in fact, “the invasion was a conscious expression of America’s unchecked global military hegemony that was designed to perpetuate that hegemony by intimidating those who would challenge it” (Record, p. 24). In this quote it is possible to appreciate that, when the