Should the United States Military Withdraw From Iraq?
Abstract
The United States public opinion of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terrorism is "bring our soldiers home." The public is influenced by the media; mostly because over two thousand Soldiers have given their lives during Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terrorism. The American public is right to want our Soldiers to come home and have the killing stopped, but is it the ethical thing to do? To solve the ethical dilemma of pulling out of Iraq now or rebuilding the nation and establishing a competent government, we have only to look at the Gulf War. During Operation Desert Storm the United States military crushed the Iraqi Military and drove them out of Kuwait and into central Iraq. The Gulf War was considered a complete success. The United States military was precise in their warfare, had few casualties, a small percentage of direct civilian casualties, and destroyed a significant number of Iraqi military forces. The United States pulled most of their military forces out of Iraq by July 1991. Comparing the Iraq of July 1991 to the Iraq of April 2003, both post-war, Iraq in 1991 had more resources remaining. However, as Richard Reid of the United Nations Children's Fund put it, an entire country was left "brain dead, essentially unmarked, a body with its skin basically intact, but with every main bone broken and with its joints and tendons cut." (Makiya, 240) Imagine the aftermath of the Iraq War without the United States military and coalition forces present to assist in rebuilding the nation. The damage to the infrastructure and the devastation to health care, water, sewage treatment, and electric power systems turned Iraq into one of the most impoverished countries. During the post-war period disease and malnutrition were widespread throughout country. One post-war study concluded that the infant and child mortality rate increased 300 percent. This increase is in excess of46,897 deaths of children under the age of 5 related to the Gulf War.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 15, 2005
- Accession Number
- AD1120993
Entities
People
- Derek Dahlke
Organizations
- United States Army Sergeants Major Academy