by Sean Davis

Created on: October 24, 2010   Last Updated: October 25, 2010

While the first President Bush was in office, we fought a short war over in that area of the world due to Iraq trying to invade Kuwait.  He knew that he didn't have an exit strategy for pulling out if we had decided to go after Bagdad itself.  In the end, Iraq pulled out of Kuwait and we to some degree helped keep the peace in the region regardless of what Iraq tried. 

When the second President Bush was in office, our fight was not with Iraq, it was with Bin Laden and his group of terrorists, who had made Afghanistan their base of operation.  Where the terrorists could be traced back to Afghanistan, we had the right to go in there and try and take out the organizational structure that led to the destruction of New York's World Trade center. 

After it started looking like the war in Afghanistan was going good, all of a sudden President George W. Bush in the public eye, started wanting to go after Iraq saying that they were harboring or helping to finance the terrorists that destroyed the twin towers.  He had kept insisting that we needed to do this due to the CIA having intelligence that suggested that Iraq was helping the terrorists even though the CIA had been saying to lay off the decision to go into Iraq until they could double check the data that they had been given supporting what he was saying due to some of it being questionable intelligence.

Instead of waiting for the CIA to find out how credible their information was, Bush pushed forward forcing Congress to make the decision on a declaration of war against Iraq.  Regardless of how credible the intelligence turned out to be, it allowed him to look like a war monger and the United States to look like a bully to the point it made things worse when it comes to how people in Iraq and in the Middle East as a whole perceive us. 

It doesn't help that the region has been through countless wars over the many generations that have lived there.  When it comes to recorded events and archeology, it has been shown that the countries in the region have a history of fighting amongst themselves and being attacked by what they perceive to be outsiders trying to convert them from the Islamic religions to Christianity.

Until the people in Iraq choose to allow themselves to be governed by an actual government that is not corrupt and that can show that they will do what it takes to deal with the country's problems, it will be an endless war or an endless cycle of war after war until either side is wiped out.  Given the mentality when it comes to war in the region, the war in Iraq even though it may have been well-intended by those in power, is a waste of resources for our country where the money being spent on the war could be used to do things to help maintain if not better our country in many ways.

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