Why are Americans so concerned with Iraq?

Answer 1

Because they have oil and we need it.

Answer 2

I believe the experience of Vietnam was a turning point. Prior to that, even in Korea, the government had no problem convincing the public that American intervention in foreign wars were necessary to keep the rest of the world from falling apart. Basically, the number of people - on both sides - who questioned this perceived wisdom grew in the age of mass media, i.e. when we could see for ourselves the horrors of war and that reality, in turn, emboldened many of those who saw it in the flesh to speak the unvarnished truth.

I am not saying that we should always stay out of other peoples' fights (just think what might have happened had we not intervened in WW2?); I'm not saying we do not do good things in war zones like liberate people and then try to improve their conditions; just that all adult Americans should know that war is not a video game - people really die - horrifically and in large numbers.

Many Americans have always felt that the Bush 43 administration had ulterior motives for invading Iraq, ranging from a desire for US companies to profit from the country's oil reserves to building permanent military bases to keeping OPEC countries from converting to petroeuros to fulfilling a long-held ambition to exterminate Saddam Hussein. Many others believe that, in the wake of 9/11, the best way to fight extremism was to establish western-style democracy in the Middle East and hope that it spread.

Unfortunately for the United States and its coalition partners as well as Iraqi civilians, the Iraq war was conducted ineptly from the start, with too few troops sent in too much of a hurry, with troops who were mostly unsure of what their mission really was, disbanding the Iraqi police and not giving coalition troops immediate authority of arrest and detention of looters, leaving huge stockpiles of conventional weapons unguarded. Finger pointing is justified, but it won't solve the problem. The only viable solution is for the Iraqis to solve their own problems, and for everybody who cares about stability in the region to contribute financial resources, professional, administrative and business expertise and peacekeeping forces to that effort.

The war in Iraq may be mainly of America's making, but it is not just America's problem.

Answer 3

Because of the oil