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Controversial Issue #3: The Iraq War – flaws, and where do we go from here?

The Unconstitutionality of the War on Terror.
1) There is nothing in our constitution that gives us authorization to attack a nation without provocation
2) There is nothing in the constitution that gives us authority to attack a nation based on the assumption that they may be a threat in the future (Bush Doctrine of preemption) and
3) There is nothing in our constitution that gives us authority to engage in nation building.

Additionally
1)    War is to be officially voted on by the legislature – not that any president since WWII has followed that.
2)    Even with the preemption of the president – there are several laws (The War Powers Act for one) that still require the president to not commit troops more than 60-90 days before he need approval for funding. Congress has not lived up to it requirement to check the president in these matters. Not that it would be easy (they’ll be accused of undermining the interest of the United States) to stand up to the powers that be, but that is what we elected them to do.

This is just a brief recap, but under no condition of the constitution or the laws passed since that time, or any precedent established by our countries leaders until the Korean War – has the president ever taken this much power to himself. Much less done so without a check and balance from the legislature.

Both parties, and these two branches of the government have failed us in this endeavor thus far.  Now we have to ask ourselves who is more likely to get us back to the closest thing we have to a constitution.

I have to agree with the Democratic Party platform here. Both in their assessment of the war in Iraq and the necessary means we need to commit to “fix” Afghanistan. Afghanistan = reasonable. Iraq = Bad. So get out of the bad. But even if we go into Afghanistan in more full force there is not much that we will do honestly with a war machine. Even the good guys do not want us there that badly. If we built more roads instead of bombing them and built more schools as promised, and provided a central safe haven to spread from, etc., we would do at least as least as much good if not more good than any number of brigades added to Afghanistan.

Osama Bin Laden could not be happier that we are over there. Because of our ability to severely lock down the nation it would be difficult for al Qa’ida to directly attack us on our own soil more than once. By pulling us over to Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist have us expending billions a day, and now approaching the trillions overall, and we are locked in a conflict that we likely cannot win by traditional warfare.

I would not consider myself an expert in national security, but I have studied it formally in school for years. Based on that education I do not believe that it makes us any safer fighting over there. Not only does it weekend us economically, but it also fuels that very people we are trying to beat. The occupation in Iraq serves only as a breading ground for more dissidents and the destabilization in the region has had a very detrimental effect on the price of oil. Increasing prices of oil are directly correlated to Islamic extremism. It takes high gas prices to fund their operations.  I do not see much point in staying as a military force. There are far bettering things to spend time, money and lives on.

That is a quick overview of that issue. War right now is just a sap on the economy and national focus. We cannot even use the excuse that the war will help improve the economy. That only works to help get you out of a depression when you weren’t at war when the depression started. Right now all of that military spending is just a drain on the resources – not a boon to the economy.

I personally think that we need to give more energy into this question of the constitutionality of the war, and whether we can consider it just. People have been dealing the concept of “Just War” theory for thousands of years – literally. So this is not something that we are likely to resolve in just a day or email. But for those of the LDS faith, I think that we can turn to the Book of Mormon and see that without question wars of aggression/pre-emption will not be justified by God. So I reject the Bush Doctrine. In doing so I know that I am placing more civilians at risk because there is a chance that by not fighting overseas the extremists will try to bring the fight to our door step again.

But honestly they are trying to do that anyway – so why not focus on home. Make it as strong as possible and then the efforts we make outside our borders – let them focus on development and if we do that there will be fewer potential terrorist to recruit from. Getting rid of the foreign oil so we are not funding our enemies with petrol-dollars. It will be pretty hard to acquire nuclear weapons if they do not have any cash.

Here is one soldiers opinion on the war in Iraq. This individual is very close to me and these are his personal words.

Constant shift of purpose
First it was, “Find the weapons of mass destruction.”  Late 2003/early 2004 we established the intelligence was flawed and that there were now WMD’s (at that point in time anyway).  Then came, “Establish a democratic state.”  Late 2004/early 2005 we captured Saddam Hussein and established a new government.  Now we’re in, “Combat the terrorist” stage.  2006 to present it’s been entirely focused on combating terrorism.  It’s almost as if there is another motive, but politically they just can’t say it.

Combating terror, why is that an impossible task for US to do?  There are two main reasons that I see.
First, 4 out of 5 Iraqis dislike the fact that we are in Iraq and our involvement in their country.  The longer we stay there “to help stabilize the government” the harder they fight against the government we helped establish.  Eventually you will see a collapse in the government because of our “stabilization” efforts for that government.

Second, is closely related to that, the Iraqi government won’t prosecute the people we capture.  When I was there in 2005, we saw 70% of the perpetrators we captured released within 2 months, and well over 90% after only 6 months.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1220/p01s01-woiq.html

Diverted attention away from original perpetrator of 9/11 – Negligible/debatable benefit to lowering threat and vulnerability
We have just over 15,000 troops in Afghanistan.  They do not have the manpower to stop the Taliban (the terrorist cell responsible for the 9/11 attacks) from gaining resources through heroin production and launching new attacks against US soldiers or even on US soil.  We are losing that battle, and that is one we can’t afford to repeat again.

Dictated by our dependency on oil
Evidence of Oil influence – The first Gulf War was about that, and the second followed in its trail.

McCain said this about the Gulf War in the last presidential debate, “we had to take Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait or it would’ve threatened the Middle Eastern world supply.”

Bush declared in October 2006 at a press conference in Rose Garden, “We can’t tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West.”

But the thing is, if we weren’t dependent upon oil in the first place, we wouldn’t have to protect “the Middle Eastern world supply”.

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