What is the US trying to establish and/or gain by being in Iraq?

Question

Til' this day, I still am clueless. I know one of GWB initial goals was to end the reign of Saddam Hussein, which already accomplished, but what's next? (The goal is to ensure a successful democracy flourishes in Iraq.) Is that even possible?
What are your thoughts.
**No insults please, mature answers only. Thanks!

Answer 1

First, it was about punishing Saddam Hussein for violating UN sanctions for the past 16 years after the first Gulf War. Then the focus shifted towards terrorism as a convenient excuse to go into Iraq based on faulty evidence. After Saddam's eventual fall from power and the rise of instability within Iraq's ethnic and religious factions, the purpose became establishing a sytem which would foster democracy and secure Iraq.
Oil may or may not have been the primary motivation for invasion, but it certainly became the "spoils" of war as certain interests highly benefitted from the chaos that has ensued since the fall of Baathist regime.

Seeing how much of a failure the current "stay the course" policy has become, it seems now that the primary purpose of remaining in Iraq is merely to repair a fractured and bruised ego on the part of the Bush White House. It's blatantly obvious in the lame attempts to put such a positive spin on otherwise ugly situations. BushCo was forewarned of the consequences of their actions way ahead of time but refused to take heed to such warnings. Now, these war-hawks are desperate to "make things right" as a way to prove wrong thumb their noses at everyone (especially the UN) who said they could not accomplish such a feat with a militarist approach. Unfortunately, their naive optimism and downright stubborness will cost us all in the long run.

Answer 2

A big part of it in the longer term is an ally in the region, an opportunity to 'project influence' into a part of the world that holds a large proportion of an important strategic natural resource - oil. It's not so much about oil for cars or for corporate proffits, it's oil to run all those wonderful, overpriced, ships, jets, tanks, and so forth that US military is so fond of.

Of course, 'projecing influence' includes things like having military bases. The US already had such bases in the region, but, shortly after invading Iraq, it closed the ones in Saudi Arabia.

Coincidentally, one of the demands that Al Qaeda had long made was the removal of US presence from Saudi Arabia (the nation that hosts the sacred city of Mecca). Also coincidentally, America has not suffered another major terrorist attack, in spite of continuing vulnerabilities.

Answer 3

We’ve created a mess in Iraq by destroying the government and destabilizing the country. We don’t know what to do to fix the mess. Bush and the people who advocated for this invasion are the clueless ones.

The motives for invading were probably more connected to control of the Iraqi oil than to valid fears about any threat to the US, other than Saddam’s possible manipulation of the oil market.

Answer 4

Good question, wish I knew. Their democracy costs us something like 250 million a day. Gates needs another 200 billion for this year. For now, but they always ask for more as the year progresses. But 20 billion for insuring our own children is just too much money. And I can't imagine anything close to democracy can be established. No thought to what would happen after Saddam at all.

Answer 5

Ideally, to create a stable democracy in Iraq, which will be a beacon of freedom to other countries in the middle east, and will help to usher them into the 21st century. Or at least the 19th.

But since we went about this so poorly, right now, I think we are just hoping that things start to stabilize so we can pull out without looking like total douche bags.

Answer 6

Quite frankly, I agree with Alan Greenspan's statement about the invasion being all about oil. After all, if Bush and his cohorts had really cared about making the US safer or bringing bin Laden to justice for the 3,000 he murdered in the 9/11 attacks, they would have focused on going after bin Laden instead of invading a country that was in no way involved in the attacks. Instead, within 5 HOURS after the attacks, Rumsfeld ordered his staff to dig up as much "evidence" as possible linking Iraq to the attacks. It's obvious that they wanted to go to Iraq all along and they merely saw the attacks as their golden opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, though, the global terrorist situation has been exacerbated, because the Islamic fundamentalists view the war as a cause celebre and now a whole new generation of terrorists is being bred. Plus, Iraq is now overrun with terrorists and is plagued by civil war, so it somehow seems rather unlikely that democracy will be securely established in Iraq anytime soon.

Answer 7

Installing a working democracy in a couple of years especially in a region that has been dominated by fundamentalism and fear for the last 1500 years is impossible...

If Americans dont want to deal with babysitting Iraq for the next 2 generations then we need to pull out and let them figure it out...

Answer 8

I think it is to establish a US presence in the ME that will dominate and play referee in the ME for quite some time. Our oil interests are very precious to our economy and the neo-conservative political agenda wants to be able to have more control over the process.

Answer 9

They are trying to help stabilize the Iraqi government. The destabilization is our fault and we have a duty to try to protect the citizens as best we can while also assisting the elected government. The major issue, to me, isn't why are we there now but rather why did we feel we had to go in when we did........

Answer 10

Now the goal is to bring security up to a point where Iraqis can police their own country and we can leave without leaving a massacre behind as we leave