President Bushs War on Iraq Essay examples -- Argumentative Persuasiv

President Bush's War on Iraq Introduction: Since the war on Iraq began on March 20, 2003, at least 1,402 coalition troops have died and 9,326 U.S. troops have been wounded in action. This is no small number and the count grows daily. One would hope, then, that these men and women were sent to war with just cause and as a last resort. However, as the cloud of apprehension and rhetoric surrounding the war has begun to settle, it has become clear that the Bush administration relied on deeply flawed analyses to make its case for war to the United Nations and to the American people, rushing this country, and its soldiers, into war. This is not to say that this war was waged against a blameless regime or that our soldiers have died in vain. Rather, that the Bush administration took advantage of the vulnerability and solidarity of the American people following the attacks of September 11 to create an environment in which any scrutiny of the justifications given for war was deemed unpatriotic and a threat to our nation’s security. In this way, the war, and Bush’s bid to maintain power through the 2004 election, went forward despite evidence that the reasoning behind going to war was, at best, misleading. The Case for War: The case for war put forward by the Bush administration rested on the establishment of Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States’ national security (see Table 1), which could only be lessened by attacking Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. In outlining the Iraqi threat, the Bush administration brought together two incidents—the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda and U.N. efforts to disarm Iraq following the Gulf War—which in reality had nothing to do with one another. The logic went ... ...ushed forth their own war by misleading the American public into believing an Iraqi threat was imminent and by taking advantage of the willingness of the American people to find strength in their American identity following the attacks of September 11. In such a climate, the path to war was not laid down by reason or necessity, but by the hawkish vision of those in power, who by coupling fear and nationalistic sentiments with a questionable body of intelligence, convinced the majority of the American people and their elected representatives that the time for war was now and the cause of war was just. In the face of such self-serving leadership, it is up to the American people to take back their democracy. The first step is to rekindle the spirit behind Thomas Paine’s reflection, â€Å"It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.†