The War We Used to Support

We fight wars to protect ourselves. People claim that the main motivation behind war is protection. If our enemies are defeated, if they cannot fight back, then we are safe from any threats they might pose. Otherwise we are never truly safe. That sentiment is believed by millions around the world and is the backbone of many foreign policies today. The “attack first, ask questions later” mindset has been around for decades but has really been brought to attention by President Bush’s actions after the attacks on September 11th, 2001 with the initiation of the Bush Doctrine. Soon after the attacks, the American government adopted a preemptive strike policy. In their eyes, it is logical to strike and destroy the so-called enemy, as long as the “enemy” has probable initiative to attack. It does not matter if the country probably would not attack in reality, the idea that they could attack is enough reason for some countries to label them as enemies and provides enough justification to attack. After the attacks on September 11th by the extremist group of Al-Qaida, American officials converged to come the conclusion that they were operating out of the Middle East, yet Middle Eastern countries were doing little to stop them. If they would not do anything to stop our enemies, then they too were our enemies. That notion led to the war that America waged on Iraq, and a majority of Americans at the time were blinded by that logic and fully supported the war. In the eyes of American citizens, extremists attacked them, so revenge was inevitable. That anger fueled logic was only supported by foreign policies that were enacted soon after the attack. Foreign policies which garnered wholehearted, although misguided support. That misguided support of the American government however, could not last forever. After some time, people began to question that ideology and the support for the war we waged began to diminish. The once highly supported Bush Doctrine idealism lost support as citizens began to see the truth of the war around them, and they could no longer sit idly and support the ideals of the government without fully questioning the rationale behind their actions.

The attack on September 11th proved to be the catalyst that policy makers needed. The policy of preemptive strike is not something that would have garnered much support unless people had a reason to support it, and the attacks provided support needed. Prior to the attack, not many citizens would have supported the war in Iraq, simply because they were apathetic to foreign events or because they did not have any particular feelings towards the war. That was no longer the case however. The extremist group, Al-Qaida, which was responsible for our suffering, identified themselves as Muslim. The Middle East, which was the land we were intending to invade and attack, was predominantly Muslim as well, so many Americans considered our war against Iraq as us waging war on a group responsible for causing our country so much loss and suffering, even though Iraq itself was not behind the attack. It was found that the “more someone stereotypes Muslims as violent and untrustworthy, the more they will support the War on Terror” (Sides 2013). By equating Al- Qaida with the fundamental qualities of a Muslim, American citizens were able to foster a higher level of mistrust for the inhabitants of the Middle East, making their support for the War on Terror increase. Reflecting off the actions of a few individuals, American citizens created an over simplified assumption regarding Muslims as a whole, and based their motives for a military attack off those assumptions. What Americans were forgetting in their rage however, was that Iraq itself proved not to be a threat to America. Iraq had been proven to contain no WMD, weapons of mass destruction, soon after we entered the country by UN officials, and overall was not really a military problem.

There was not enough evidence to invade Iraq. American policy makers knew this when the campaign commonly known as the “War on Terror” began. They knew that their constituents would not agree with a war fought on a far off land, unless they were sure that it was something that was absolutely needed. Understanding this was the key to fostering the support needed. Gaining support was something that policy makers were good at. It was an inherent quality as it would have been needed to gather enough support to get into office, and with all their experience, they knew how to rally people. They understood that well-placed rhetoric was capable of building the hype required to successfully start the war, so soon after the attacks on September 11th, the rhetoric began. Joanne Esch (p. 365), a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, correctly identified key rhetorical phrases used after the attacks, such as “new terrorism” and “everything changed after 9/11.” Phrases such as these were key following the attack. Looking at the first phrase — new terrorism — it was strong rhetoric, but it was hardly a fact. Describing terrorism as “new terrorism” implied that terrorism similar to the one we are facing now didn’t exist before, which is untrue. Terrorism has always been around, but calling it new made it appear to be a prominent issue that could be stopped if we acted fast. When considering the latter — everything changed after 9/11 — that is also not true. It was not the attacks that changed everything, rather it was the actions America took in response that provided definite change. Even former President Bush contributed to the rhetoric used to garner support for the war. He often referred to the enemy as the “axis of evil” and often spoke about how God would ensure justice was granted. By labeling the actions of our enemies as evil, he made the actions of America seem almost pure and righteous, and by saying God was on their side, he was able to reach an even larger audience by reaching the people around the world who believed in a God. He made it appear that the American stance was supported by God, and that God had blessed our side. These are just a few of the many rhetorical statements that arose after the attacks. All of which politicians used to invoke support for the war against Iraq, knowing that without this rhetoric, there would not have been much support otherwise.

Support for the Iraq war stayed strong through the years, albeit a slow decline, at least in regards to Americans. Although the initial support for the war was garnered from the hype from the rhetoric used, it lasted longer than expected. There were many reasons over time that should have caused Americans to question their support for the war, but Americans have proved to be steadfast in their support, at least for a time. That much was evident after support remained, even after pictures and stories of the Iraq war were published. The pictures showed soldiers performing inhumane acts against prisoners of war. As Marc Hetherington (2011) explained, Americans are much less likely to support civil rights and liberties for others, “especially the extension of rights to disliked and threatening groups” (p.1). By seeing the prisoners of war as a threat, Americans dehumanized them, making the horrible acts inflicted on them seem less severe. This goes back to American opinions of Muslims. American citizens viewed them as people who were different from themselves, almost alien, to the point where Americans were barely affected by the inhumane actions soldiers took against their prisoners. Although this was nothing but a coping mechanism after seeing acts such as those, it was not the best way to process seeing such images. The actions we took were drastic, and we should have recognized them as that. It did not matter that we disliked the people who were suffering because of us, they were still human beings and their suffering should have meant something to us.

America used to been seen as the strong superpower which stood for fairness. It stood as a role model for others when it came to developing their justice systems because America had always stood for doing the right thing, and fairness, and liberty. For that reason, when we decided to invade Iraq after the attacks on September 11th, other nations supported us. We had always held a high degree of credibility that the other nations believed in when we started this war. As soon as we entered Iraq however, without the support of the United Nations Security Council, the credibility came into question. That initial credibility all but vanished, as Benjamin Goldsmith, from the University of Sydney, explained when “foreign publics were exposed to disturbing photos and stories of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq” (p. 866) . At that point, many if not all, nations who continued to back the United States questioned their support. America was supposed to stand for justice, for fairness, for liberty. How could their forces be responsible for such heinous acts? Global support for America’s war on Iraq had slowly began to fade. The pictures, coupled with the fact that Iraq held no weapons of mass destruction, a claim America used to enter the war, made America’s righteous battle seem more and more like a crusade for revenge every day.

Once the nations around the globe began to renounce their support for America’s War on Terror, citizens began to question their need for revenge. They slowly began to realize exactly what America was doing to countries and people halfway around the world in a war that had no remaining justifications. Looking back, many Americans began to go over what exactly was the reason behind the war, and how close we really were to accomplishing those goals. The war in Iraq was far from being what Americans had originally wanted. Philip Gordon (2006) accurately described the effects of our invasion of Iraq as “an unsuccessful war, overstretched… military, and broken the domestic bank.” America had set out in this war to protect the American public, but after nearly a decade, instead of protecting people, we were harming them. We wanted to stop terrorism from spreading, and we were nowhere near definitive success in that. We no longer had the military available, and we were in an ever increasing debt. What America had intended might have been noble, but their unchecked actions had led to the worst possible outcomes. It seemed as if our war had truly been nothing but an ill-advised act of revenge; there seemed to be no valid reason for the war that had once been so highly supported. Policy makers had been right early on; the only reason the war was able to start was the attacks on September 11th, which enabled policy makers to gain the support they needed to launch the war.

Americans were blinded early on about the causes for the war. All they saw was the fact that the group behind the attacks was housed in the countries they were intending to invade, and all they heard was well crafted rhetoric, pushing and persuading them support a war which would solve their problems and keep them safe. The combination of the two led support for the war to an all-time high of nearly 70% of those polled in 2003 as reported by Pew Research (2008). At the start of the war, a majority of not only were in support of the war, but also believed that military force was required to accomplish what they had set out to do. They even believed that the war was going well in regards to us reaching for what we had intended. As time went by however, that all changed. Half a decade after the initial poll in 2003, the second poll showed that nearly 60% of people had come to believe that the war was not going as well as they had hoped, and likewise, a that majority now believed that military force should not have been used to in the war. Through the years, it seemed as if the support for the war declined steadily. After citizens began to understand just what they had gotten into with the war, many began to question their support for it.

The attacks on September 11th, 2001, proved useful to the American government. Although millions suffered from the attacks on American soil, the attacks provided the hype policy makers needed to launch a war on Iraq, which was supported by not only Americans, who were blinded by rhetoric and the over simplification of their enemies, but also by nations around the globe who were sympathetic towards America after a deadly, unprovoked attack on an iconic landmark on American soil. Overtime however, the world began to see America, the once force of justice and liberty, as simply pursing nothing but revenge after our initial reasons for attack were proven false, such as the potential for WMD in Iraq, as well as after pictures and stories being leaked about the inhumane acts American soldiers had taken towards prisoners of war. That was the point where many began to question America’s true intentions. Even the steadfast Americans how had wholeheartedly supported the war began to doubt its importance. Citizens began to see the once inevitable war as nothing but a drain of their countries resources. The war which they had once supported was not what they had expected. They were not fighting the group that had attacked them, but rather attacking the country that the group happened to reside in. Not only that, they were no longer sure if their reasons were justification enough to enter a war on that scale. Half a decade after the war had been waged, Americans began to truly see how wrong they were in placing their support in the war, which had not been as beneficial as they once expected. Rather, many Americans who once supported the war at one point had reconsidered that blind support and had grown to believe that the war was not something that America should continue to partake in.

References

Esch, J. (2010). Legitimizing the “War on Terror”: Political Myth in Official-Level Rhetoric. Political Psychology, 31(3), 357–391. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9221.2010.00762.x

Goldsmith, B. E., & Horiuchi, Y. (2009). Spinning the Globe? U.S. Public Diplomacy and Foreign Public Opinion. Journal Of Politics, 71(3), 863–875.

Gordon, P. H. (2006). The End of the Bush Revolution. Foreign Affairs, 85(4), 75–86.

Hetherington, M., & Suhay, E. (2011). Authoritarianism, Threat, and Americans’ Support for the War on Terror. American Journal Of Political Science, 55(3), 546–560. doi:10.1111/j.1540–5907.2011.00514.x

Rosentiel, T. (2008). Public Attitudes Toward the War in Iraq: 2003–2008. Retrieved November 10, 2016, from http://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-toward-the-war-in-iraq-20032008/

Sides, J., & Gross, K. (2013). Stereotypes of Muslims and Support for the War on Terror. Journal Of Politics, 75(3), 583–598. doi:10.1017/S0022381613000388