Dear US, Stop fighting a war without cause

Sofia Rojas

11th grade

Since the early 2000s the United States has been a constant focus in international media. Its constant controversial policies and actions opened an enormous resistance movement against U.S. intervention. While America’s mistakes have been many. Single-handedly one of the biggest ones has the name of the “Global War on Terrorism”.

The U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in an Operation called Iraqi Freedom. While many were responsible for orchestrating such inhumane conflict, George W. Bush was the front of it all. George W. Bush was accountable for selling on the biggest lie’s in the modern political scenario. W. Bush was so fixated in conducting a global war against terrorism that he misled American soldiers and citizens into believe that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a hotspot for jihadism and nuclear weapons. President W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, one of the most important decisions in modern history. The U.S. directed invasion led to the death of more than 200,000 citizens and displaced at least 9 million Iraqi citizens. Bush, who won through the electoral college is the son of former president George H. Bush. Although, they were related, their government’s couldn’t have been more different.

Bush’s anti terrorism policies led for the biggest hotspots of human rights abuses to be opened. Guantánamo Bay and Al Ghraib were both penitentiaries opened during the Bush administration. Both correction facilities are remembered for tormenting the inmates with torture techniques such as: force-feeding, sexual assault, intents of drowning, teeth plucking, and more. But, what many remember the W. Bush administration for is the Al Ghraib scandal. During the early stages of the Iraqi war members of the CIA and U.S. army committed an innumerable amount of human rights abuses against detainees stationed on the Al Ghraib prison. While the W. Bush administration claims that the abuses seen in this prison were isolated incidents. Human right groups such as the Red Cross affirm that said torture plans were part of U.S. policy. To put it in perspective, 36 inmates were killed in the Al Grahib prison due to mortar attacks. A few years later, documents called the “Torture Memos” would be exposed in which the United States department of Justice authorized torment techniques to be used during interrogations.

The Global War on Terrorism which had the goal to deter Islamic extremism failed drastically at meeting its initial criteria. Since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism doubled in the Asian peninsula. In the first 12 months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq they were 19 vehicle bombings in the country, following, in the 12 first months of the U.S. invasion in Iraq terrorist attacks quadrupled to 302 in the span of months. Even so, at the peak of the war on terrorism extremist groups claimed the lives of more than 5,000 citizens and directly caused more than 9,000 injuries. Additionally, as the U.S. was starting its counterterrorism plan in 2002 and 2003 the African continent only counted 9 terrorist attacks. Today, extremist groups have conducted more than 6,000 terrorist attacks all over the region. This means that since the United States has established counterterrorism techniques in Africa, domestic terrorism has spiked by more than 75000%.

From 2018 to 2020 the United States has conducted counterterrorism operations in 85 countries worldwide. However, this has been proven to be extremely inefficient in the long run. In the post 9/11 wars more than 9,000,000 people have been killed. The same idea is supported by newspapers such as Vox and The Nation which express the following: “The US Special Operations forces are currently deployed in more than 100 countries, roughly 60 percent of the nations on the planet. The clandestine war has spread well beyond the Middle East; it’s now fully globalized.”

It is time to stop a war that constantly endorses and encapsulates citizens into inhumane living conditions. No human is deserving of torture or any type of undignified treatment. We argue that we want world peace, but still create mass conflicts in order to serve a political agenda. So, it is important to question: To what lengths are we willing to go in the name of “world peace’’?

REFERENCES:

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/6/14166684/terrorism-iraq-war-al-qaeda-9-11-donald-trump-bush-obama-afghanistan

War on terrorism | Summary & FactsBritannicahttps://www.britannica.com › topic

Latest Figures | Costs of WarWatson Institute for International and Public Affairshttps://watson.brown.edu › figures