Morality of the Iraq War by Laurence M. Vance

The war in Iraq is immoral because it is not defensive. The essence of war is killing people and destroying property. It is never moral to kill someone and destroy his property unless one is acting in self-defense. The war in Iraq is anything but self-defense. The United States invaded a sovereign country thousands of miles away that had not attacked us. Before we invaded Iraq, not one American had been killed by an Iraqi since the last time we invaded. But have not the Iraqis killed, injured, or maimed thousands of U.S. soldiers? Of course they have. We would do the same thing to foreign troops that invaded our soil. We can call the invasion of Iraq regime change, nation building, or gunboat diplomacy, but we certainly cannot call it self-defense. But what about the September 11^th terrorist attacks? What about them? President Bush himself has acknowledged that Iraq was not behind the September 11^th terrorist attacks and was not connected with al Qaede. A report drawn up by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz for the Project for the New American Century a year before the 2001 terrorist attacks shows that Bush’s minions were waiting for what they called a "new Pearl Harbor" that could be used to justify the United States taking military control of Iraq. But what about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? Do you mean the weapons the United States sold Iraq during the 1980s when Iraq was our ally or do you mean the non-existent weapons of mass destruction that Bush used to justify invading Iraq before he acknowledged that "most of the intelligence turned out to be wrong"?

The war in Iraq is immoral because of its incredible cost. Although then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that the war would cost $50 billion, it is now costing the American taxpayers over $200 million a day. Congress just appropriated $100 billion to continue fighting the war this year. The final cost of the war is projected to be has high as $2 trillion. And who knows what the cost will be to provide a lifetime of medical care to the thousands of wounded and mangled U.S. troops. There comes a time when it must be said that enough is enough. With the national debt fast approaching $9 trillion, this is a war that we cannot afford.

The war in Iraq is immoral because 3,500 U.S. soldiers have died for a lie. The U.S. military does not defend our freedoms. Instead, it serves as the world’s policeman, fireman, social worker, bully, and busybody. Rather than guarding our borders, patrolling our coasts, and protecting our citizens, the Defense Department – which couldn’t defend its own headquarters – is focused on fighting the next foreign war. There are over 700 military bases on foreign soil, with U.S. troops stationed in 159 different regions of the world. Instead of the U.S. military helping to guarantee peace and stability throughout the world, the presence of the U.S. military more often than not is the cause of war and instability around the globe.

The war in Iraq is immoral because of the tremendous death and destruction that we have meted out to Iraqis. After the United States invaded Iraq the first time during the 1991 Gulf War, we imposed brutal economic sanctions on Iraq that lead to the deaths of half a million infants and children. Osama bin Laden listed these sanctions against Iraq as one of the main reasons for the September 11^th attacks on the United States. I believe the CIA term for what we experienced is blowback. The scriptural principle is "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." But even if Iraq had not been devastated by U.S. sanctions and yet still had been directly responsible for the September 11^th attacks, I fail to see how that justifies reducing the country to rubble and killing – according to the latest estimates – 600,000 people, most of whom were supposedly people who had been brutalized by Saddam Hussein.