how is the war in iraq an example of military imperialism?

Question

i need three reasons.
i have one.
-we went in war before 9/11, so we were obviously trying to control something over there.

PLEASE HELP ME. tell me anything you know about this topic....miltary imperialism or war in iraq...

i'd appreciate it ALOT.

thank you.

Answer 1

Actually it isn't an example of military imperialisim, and it has little or nothing to do with 9-11. Imperialisim is when you go to somebody elses country, take it over, and KEEP IT. We don't want to keep Iraq. The only real example of American Imperialisim was when we took California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada from the Mexicans. THAT is Imperialism. Iraq is NOT imperialisim because we don't want to keep it. The only people who say it is, don't really know what they are talking about.

The first Gulf War started when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991.
This was Imperialisim on Saddam Hussen's part. He had invaded Iran back in 1980 and for over 8 years it was a long, bloody, and EXPENSIVE conflict.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825449.html

He didn't win, but he lost a lot of men and a lot of money. He NEEDED money... and just south of him was Kuwait... rich, no real army to speak of, and Iraq had a (more or less bogus) claim that Kuwait was a lost province of Iraq.
On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and annexed it... made it officially part of Iraq.

Despite what one of the other "answers" here said there were NO U.S. troops in Kuwait at this time. (Except for like a dozen Marines at the Embassy.) If there had been Saddam would not have tried to invade Kuwait... he would have gotten his behind kicked, and he knew that.

The US wouldn't stand for this. One reason was that Kuwait had a lot of oil ,and between Iraqi oil AND Kuwait oil Saddam would have had a LOT of the world oil supply under his personal control, and he would have jacked up the price. Even worse Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman were just over the border of Kuwait and THEY didn't have the military power to stop Saddam if he decided he wanted THEIR oil too.

The Saudis wanted us to help them stop Saddam because they were afraid they would be next. The Kuwaits wanted us to help them get their country back. The economists and Europe and Japan were all afraid of what would happen when Saddam jacked up the oil price (he needed the money to pay for all the weaopns he had bought back during his war with Iran).

The US went to the UN and got authorization and got a coaltion together and on January 16, 1992 we went across the border, destroyed the Iraqi Army, and chased Saddam out of Kuwait.

Saddam signed a cease fire, but pretty much started breaking the rules of the cease fire the minute he signed it.

The US told the Iraqis to rise up and overthrow Saddam and that we would help them. They did rise up, we did NOT help them, Saddam survived and butchered thousands of Iraqis... he had used chemical weapons on his own citizens before (when they tried to revolt during the Iran/Iraq war) and in the Iran/Iraq war both sides had used chemical weapons, so we knew he had them. Part of the cease fire was that Saddam would get rid of his chemical and biological weapons. The UN sent inspectors in to make sure that happened.

Under Clinton Saddam played fast and loose with the UN sanctions, he dorked the UN weapons inspectors around, and finally they left the country, and he wouldn't let them back in. Technically this was a MAJOR violation of the Cease Fire, but Saddam knew that Clinton wouldn't dare do anything about it.

It turns out that Saddam most likely HAD lost most, if not all, of his chemical and biological weapons by 2000, but he didn't want anyone to know that. Saddam felt that the only thing keeping Iran, Syria, and his other neighbors from attacking him was the fact they though he still had these chemical and biological weapons.... so he did everything he could to convince the rest of the world he still had these things. This is probably one of the five or six stupidest things ever done in human history, but nobody ever said Saddam was very smart. Nasty and brutial yes, smart... not so much.

So Bush the younger becomes President and before he has even been President a year 9-11 happens. The first thing Bush does is take out the Taliban in Afghanistan. So far, so good.

The thing is Al Queda isn't just in Afghanistan. They are all over the Arab world, and they (or more properly what is left of them ) is looking for a new country to work out of. Bush sees Iraq... he doesn't like Iraq very much in the first place... and Saddam HATES Bush and the USA. He knows that Bush the first had counted on Saddam being overthrown and that didn't work so it was kind of an embarrisement to the US that Saddam was still in power. Also Saddam had tried to have Bush the first assassinated.. it didn't work and Clinton used it as an excuse to fire a few cruse missles into Iraq. Bush knows that Saddam HATES the US, and he knows that known terrorisits are living and working in Iraq. He THINKS that Iraq has lots of Chemcial, biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons... he is afraid that Saddam will give these weapons to the terrorists and they will use them against the US. He is REALLY afraid that Saddam will hook up with Al Queda and give them the biological, chemical and nuclear weapons we thought Saddam had.

(Note, back in the early 1980s Saddam was trying to build an atomic bomb.. he had the French build him a reactor built at Osiraq where he was trying to make an atomic bomb, but Israel sent in their air force and blew the whole place up.)
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm

Add into this a number of Iraqi defectors that ... well they lied like crazy and the CIA believed them. One of them was a guy named Chilabi (sp?) who fed the Bush administration a big line of lies about how popular he was, about how he has all these great connections, how he will be the George Washington of Iraq...etc.... basicly he wanted Bush to invade Iraq and was hoping to be appointed Leader of Iraq by the USA, so he told Bush and the CIA whatever he thought would help him get that done. Bush and Rumsfeld believed him.

So Bush invades Iraq... it turns out nobody there likes Chilabi much and no, he would not make a good President of Iraq and he gets dumped. It also turns out that the CIA and British Intelligence and everyone was fooled...Saddam did NOT have the Chemical, Biological and Nuclear weapons we all though the did... nobody though he was BLUFFING!!

Saddam gets caught and put on trial and hung. (In part for the chemical weapons attack on his own people he had done years before).

Now, and this is important, the US COULD have just picked some Iraqi General, made him dictator, left the Iraqi Army alone, and left. We would have been out of ther by now and all the troops would be home. Sure there would be fighting, but it would be Iraqi killing Iraqi and that sort of fighting never makes it onto CNN/CBS etc. (CNN and CBS only care about wars when white people get killed... there are whole wars in Africa that never make it onto CNN even once...look at how much press Rwanda got, or Darfur gets...but I digress...).

BUT that is not what Bush wants to do in Iraq. He wants to try and make Iraq into a free democracy... like we did with Germany and Japan after WW2. So the US abolished the Iraqi Army (this is widely recognized to have been a stupid move... now we have to build a whole new one before we can go home) and he has had first free elections in Iraqi History.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_legislative_election,_December_2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iraq

So Bush doesn't want to keep Iraq... he wants to make Iraq into a rich, free, democracy... like we did with Germany and Japan after WW2, and in South Korea after the Korean War..and then leave. (Though he will probably want to keep some troops there in bases to keep Iran and Syria on their toes.) He hopes that if he can do this, the other Arab nations will become free and democratic too... and that this will mean they will stop supporting terrorisit groups like Al Queda. There are lots of people that doubt this is possible.

There is a lot of debate about IF this is going to work. There are no free and democratic countries in the Arab world. There aren't many free and democratic countires in the Moslem world... there are theological reasons in Islam that very strongly discourage democracy, but that is another issue. Believe it or not, NOT everybody in the world LIKES Democracy... lots of folks, especially in the Arab world think Democracy is a HORRIBLE idea and HATE it. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan etc. all have Kings... and when a country becomes a democracy the King normally gets it in the neck...(look at what happened to the King in the French Revolution). Obviously the kings of those countries don't want their countries to become Democratic... and neither do the Islamic religious leaders... Democratic countires have freedom of religon, and that would be a big problem for the Islamic religious leaders, the LAST thing they want is a country where people can choose what religion they are.

That is why so many Moslems, especially Arabs, are fighting us... making Iraq and the rest of the Middle East into peaceful, free, democratic countries is the LAST thing these guys want. Not all the Arabs or Moslems feel that way, but many, if not most, of them do.

Lots of folks don't think Bush really understood, (or even now understands) that fact.

So the bottom line is, the US war in Iraq is about as NON-Imperialist as you can get. Bush actually wants Iraq to be free. He wants the Iraqis to elect their own governmet, and he wants to bring the troops home... If he didn't want Iraq to be free would be a whole lot easier (like I said). We would just appoint some General to be dictator for life, give him a ton of money and guns, and go home.

Answer 2

1. The vast majority of civlilian contractors in Iraq are American companies. They are profiting from the war
2. American imperialism differs in that it is more by means of economic domination ("globalization") rather than colonization. The "liberalizing" if Iraq means that it will be ripe for selling American goods to.
3. The strategic location of Iraq and the control of the government and resources there would have been a powerful tool in the control of the region if it had been successful.

Note: The first Gulf War was not imperialism; it was a legitimate attempt to repel an invading army from a helpless country. There *were* economic motives, but it was not an illegal invasion like the current war.

Answer 3

It’s a form of imperialism. Just like the Brits did in the pass. Imposing there system on others. They like the Brits saying we are bringing you our ways and this is how you do this again our way, again like the Brits told millions of Africans. But look at the mess they left Africa in. Bush doesn't care about the Iraqi people. Does he cares about the people in Nepal occupied by the Chinese. Silly me forgot no oil in Nepal or Sudan, or Zimbabwe. So Bush doesn't give a dam about them. That a media rubbish that Bush help the Iraqi stand up to Saddam.

Answer 4

First of all, the conflict in Iraq is not a war. It is an invasion and an occupation.

"Imperialism developed in the early 19th century after the Industrial Revolution when the western nations began to take control of other non-industrialized nations and colonies. The "Age of Imperialism" usually refers to the Old Imperialism period starting from 1860, when major European states started colonizing the other continents. The term 'Imperialism' was initially coined in the mid to late 1500s to reflect the policies of Empires such as Britain and France's expansion into Africa, and the Americas."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism

Answer 5

Imperialism involves taking property through war and keeping it as you own.

Since the US has never done that, no wars waged by the US can be classified as "military imperialism."

You've been given a bogus question that has no answer.

Tell your "teacher" that the best example of "military imperialism" was the Roman Empire and it's many conquests. Then ask if you can get a teacher that knows history and not one that only knows propaganda.

Answer 6

seems as though it depends on ur definition of imperialism. I get the impression the US, the majority of international democratic nations and the world oil scene in general benefit from a measure of (western?) control . Maybe control = stability to a degree.

Answer 7

Well America is always trying to control other countries and and bend the policies so that we benefit and look like the hero. Just look at past performances. It would be different if it was just a war in Iraq. America is not smart when it comes to picking fights, especially as it has too much inner fighting in the various agencies. A unified America is a myth. Not sure if that helps.

Answer 8

do you think it's imperialism or the military might of the USA makes you think so. What is you definition of imperialism at this century?

Answer 9

Gulf War 1991 Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait to control the oil in Kuwait. U.S. soldiers or marines were stationed in Kuwait. U.S wanted oil U.S. went to war it defeated The Iraqi Army. UN weapons Inspectors during the 1990's were sent to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction they never found any weaponsof mass distruction . The U.S. Army went war with Iraq again after 9/11 but this time it was in Iraq different situation they wanted control of the oil in Iraq as well as in Kuwait.

Answer 10

You're very confused about why the
first gulf war happened.

Also, the term "military imperialism" doesn't
make sense when referring to a democracy.

Answer 11

It's not. If a teacher assingned this topic to you, you should write a paper about how liberals arts teachers and profs push a radical left agenda on students, instead of teaching their subject.